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Business of the House
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 9 June—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s speech on health, followed by motion to approve a reasoned opinion relating to undeclared work.
Tuesday 10 June—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s speech on home affairs.
Wednesday 11 June—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s speech on jobs and work.
Thursday 12 June—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen’s speech on the economy and living standards.
Friday 13 June—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 16 June will include:
Monday 16 June—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Consumer Rights Bill.
Tuesday 17 June—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill.
Wednesday 18 June—Opposition Day [1st allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 19 June—Motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to terrorism, followed by a general debate on the UK’s relationship with Africa, followed by a general debate on defence spending. The subjects for both debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee in the last Session.
Friday 20 June—The House will not be sitting.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 19 June will be:
Thursday 19 June—A debate on the Twelfth Report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee entitled “Parliament’s Role in Conflict Decisions: A Way Forward” followed by a debate on the Fourth Report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee entitled “Do We Need a Constitutional Convention for the UK?”
Ms Eagle
Tomorrow we will remember the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings, when 160,000 allied troops crossed the channel to liberate Europe. Thousands of men gave their lives to help free Europe from fascist tyranny. We must never forget their bravery and their achievement.
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us next week’s business. Will he confirm that after the debate on the Queen’s Speech he plans to carry on much as he left off by leaving the Opposition and the Backbench Business Committee to provide half the business each week?
There is a G7 meeting taking place in Brussels today at which the continuing crisis in Ukraine will be the main item on the agenda. Can the Leader of the House confirm that either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary intends to come to this House on Monday with a statement?
Following yesterday’s point of order by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) and your ruling, Mr Speaker, may I thank the Leader of the House for making generally available the No. 10 press briefing on the Gracious Speech? I see that he has just received his own briefing on this question. However, can he tell us why it took a point of order and your ruling for the Government to give to MPs what they had already freely given to the world’s media? Will the Leader of the House now confirm that he will make simultaneously available to this House any future press briefings, especially on the autumn statement and next year’s Budget?
The front pages have been full of the unedifying war between the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary on the Government’s strategy to combat extremism. It appears that separate approaches are being pursued in two different Government Departments, while the Communities Secretary is nowhere to be seen. The briefing is poisonous and the Prime Minister is said to be furious. The Government should be protecting our young people from coming under the influence of extremist ideas. Instead, they appear to be preoccupied with conducting a proxy leadership battle in the Conservative party. Does the Leader of the House agree that this is too important to be treated in this contemptuous way? May we have a statement from the Prime Minister on which of his warring Cabinet Ministers is actually in charge of this vital issue that is crucial to our national security?
Yesterday we heard this Government’s last-gasp legislative programme before the general election, but they have been so busy briefing and counter-briefing over whether the Queen’s Speech is blue rinse or yellow round the edges that they have left the big strategic questions that our country faces completely unanswered. This was a programme that failed to rise to the challenge. Plastic bags were in, but the crisis in the NHS was not even mentioned. There was no mention of immigration, no action on energy prices and no sign of the promised restrictions on cigarette packaging.
The programme outlined yesterday was so modest that even The Daily Telegraph could only call it “light touch”. Her Majesty might just as well have said, “Members of the Commons and Lords, my Government will switch between chillaxing and playing Fruit Ninja from now until the general election.”
We are well used to this coalition fighting, but things have now got so bad that both parties are turning on themselves. The Education Secretary is openly disparaging the Home Secretary, and she is briefing against him. I know he is classically trained, but I think he should beware the ides of May.
The Liberal Democrats have been as successful at organising a coup as they are at everything else. Lord Oakeshott has stormed off, denouncing his party for having
“no roots, no principles and no values.”
I think many of us would agree with that statement. Then we were treated to an excruciating show of enforced unity between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Business Secretary over a pint down the pub. I must say that they looked like they were enjoying each other’s company about as much as they were enjoying the beer. They were in a pub called No Hope and No Anchor. I have thought of a suitable pub for this Government, too: it is called Cock and Bull, serves only bitter and the British public cannot wait for last orders to be called.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her response to the business statement. She made quite a good joke about May, but unfortunately we are in June.
I completely share the hon. Lady’s view that tomorrow—the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings—offers an opportunity to commemorate the tremendous sacrifice, remember the great importance of the event and celebrate the participation of those who, happily, are still with us. I was particularly interested to read about Jock Hutton, aged 89, who is going to take a parachute drop. That is testament to not only the kind of men they were, but the kind of men they continue to be, which is fantastic.
On the question of business, I am slightly surprised that the shadow Leader of the House still does not quite get it. In this Parliament, we have decided to give the Backbench Business Committee and Back Benchers access to nearly a day a week to raise the subjects they consider to be of greatest priority. That is important. It is not the case that the only purpose of this House is to scrutinise and pass legislation. I am firmly of the opinion that less legislation that is better scrutinised is a good thing.
[Official Report, 9 June 2014, Vol. 582, c. 1-2MC.]As it happens, in the last Session we passed 20 Bills, while in the penultimate Session of the previous Parliament, 18 Bills were passed. An interesting contrast is that in the last Session, 24 Bills had two days of scrutiny on Report in this Chamber, while the figure for the whole of the previous Parliament was only 10. When it has come down to it, we have been able to accomplish a substantial legislative programme and we will continue to do so in this Session, with better scrutiny and legislation as a result.
The hon. Lady asked for a statement on Monday. Obviously, if summits such as that involving the G7 Ministers discuss something important that should be reported to the House, of course we will do so. I cannot necessarily say that there will be a statement, but we will certainly make sure that the House is fully kept up to date if there are matters that require reporting.
The hon. Lady asked about the press briefing pack. It did not require a point of order by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) for it to be provided to the Vote Office. It was provided in hard copy form yesterday morning, along with a link enabling Members to access it electronically. I am sorry, but that is a fact and the point of order came after it had already been provided to the House in that way.
The hon. Lady asked about the question of extremism in schools, and she asked for a statement. Frankly, the appropriate time for a statement will be when Ofsted has produced its report. As far as the question of colleagues working together on the extremism taskforce is concerned, absolutely they are working together. They are working together energetically with the objective not only of taking the issues extremely seriously, but of taking measures that will be effective. As she has seen, the extremism taskforce has already given rise to a range of measures that we have taken to deal with the question. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has done so, particularly in relation to questions about schools in Birmingham, including by establishing an inquiry by the retired senior police officer Peter Clarke, which will report back to him this summer.
I thought it was a rather good thing that my right hon. Friends the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills went to a pub to reassure publicans the length and breadth of this country that this Government will take the action they have very much sought on the relationships of pub tenants with brewery companies. That should be welcomed by the Labour party, rather than otherwise.
The hon. Lady asked about things that were and were not in the Queen’s Speech. I must say that in this case, she has written her script not just without reading the Queen’s Speech, but probably before it was even provided to her. She talks about demanding action on employment agencies, as she did the other day—we have acted on that. She asks for action on the minimum wage—if she cares to look, she will see that that is in the Gracious Speech. The Opposition want to know when we will deal with zero-hours contracts—it is in the Queen’s Speech, as she can see. They want to cut tax for working people—this Government have increased the personal tax allowance to £10,000. They want action on consumer rights—we will debate the remaining stages of the Consumer Rights Bill during the week after next. She wants action on energy bills—we have just passed the Energy Act 2013, in the last Session. She wants action on immigration—we passed the Immigration Act 2014, which received Royal Assent on 14 May, and its measures are being brought into force. They talk about action on reforming banks—we had two banking reform Acts during the last Session. I am afraid that the Labour party’s only approach seems to be to criticise us by recycling the things we have already done and pretending that we have not done them.
It is very clear what the coalition Government have to do. We just need to get out there and make it absolutely clear that we are taking the measures for which this country is calling. The Labour party has nothing to say and, most importantly, absolutely nothing to say on how to promote economic growth in this country—nothing on more jobs, greater wealth, improving incomes for people. There was a hole bigger than a black hole at the heart of the Leader of the Opposition’s speech yesterday, with absolutely nothing about how to promote the economy in the future.
This party has a long-term economic plan. This Government have a long-term economic plan. We are cutting the deficit, stimulating growth, delivering jobs, promoting schools and skills, capping welfare and controlling immigration. We are the party that is delivering on that plan.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
May I ask the Leader of the House to grant Government time for an early debate on the groceries code adjudicator and its operations? The price of beef is being severely depressed at the moment, which is having a severe impact on hill farmers the length and breadth of the country. Processors are taking a higher margin, while livestock producers are taking a lower price. It would be timely to review this excellent legislation at the earliest possible opportunity.
Mr Lansley
I cannot promise my hon. Friend time for a debate immediately, but she will note that my right hon. and hon. Friends from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be at the Dispatch Box this time next week to answer questions, and she may wish to raise this with them. I agree with her that the legislation is important, and it is also important for us to ensure that it enables us to act when necessary. In any case, I will ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to respond separately to her about the issues she raises.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
May we have an early debate on purdah and the way in which Departments apply it? On 20 May, two days before polling day, the headline of the Ilford Recorder website was “King George A&E to remain open beyond 2015, says Health Secretary”. “Axe Halted” was the headline of the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian published on polling day. A leaflet apparently went out saying that it was an official announcement by the Secretary of State for Health. Given that the Leader of the House is a former Secretary of State for Health, would he have issued a leaflet saying that it was an official announcement two days before polling day, in breach of purdah? May we have an early debate on the appropriateness of private offices, officials and Ministers trying to break purdah during election periods?
Mr Lansley
I have seen the newspaper report to which the hon. Gentleman refers and what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health said. It was a restatement of existing policy. There was no announcement. I know that perfectly well because my right hon. Friend was effectively restating what I had said, which was that there would be no changes at King George hospital, Ilford until there were sufficient improvements in the A and E service at Queen’s hospital and the community service that is provided to the local community. That had been announced previously. What is in a leaflet that is provided by a party is not the responsibility of the Government. Purdah does not mean that previous Government announcements and policies cannot be restated. That is all that happened.
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
At the risk of dismissing the British summer before it has even started, many of my constituents are focused on next winter and the rain and floods that it may bring. The Leader of the House will appreciate that there is a short time in which to do the work that is necessary. We are making progress on dredging and on many other things that need to be done in Somerset. The one thing that we need clarity about is the setting up of the new Somerset river authority, the funding stream that will support it and the ongoing maintenance. May we have a debate with or a statement by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to provide us with an update on the progress and to enable us to ask questions on our constituents’ behalf?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He will remember that Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers are looking to make further statements to the House about the lessons that have been learned and about establishing greater resilience. Those will apply especially to Somerset, where we have made specific commitments. I will ask my right hon. and hon. Friends when they might be able to update him and the House about that matter in Somerset and more widely.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
May we have a debate on funding for disabled students? The Government announced recently that there would be changes to the disabled students allowance, which enables such students to fund some of the costs associated with their higher education. I understand that there will be a very short consultation on the changes and little time for MPs to consider them before they are presented in secondary legislation. The National Union of Students will be lobbying MPs in their constituencies on the matter tomorrow. It is important that this House has the chance to discuss and debate what it has to say.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that matter, which I will of course discuss with my right hon. and hon. Friends. On the short consultation, we have tried to ensure that we are able to press forward more rapidly; therefore, many of our consultations are not as long as they used to be. That the changes will be in the form of secondary legislation affords the House an opportunity to consider them, if necessary. I do not believe that the regulations will be considered under the affirmative procedure, but that does not mean that they cannot be the subject of consideration in this House if Members so choose.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
May we have a debate on immigration, particularly from within the EU? If there is one lesson that all parties need to learn from the recent elections, it is that the public are sick to the back teeth of open borders with the EU and unlimited immigration from within the EU. Surely the least that they can expect from this House is a debate on the subject, so that as we go into the general election, everybody’s constituents know where their Member of Parliament stands on the issue. If the Leader of the House wants to tie that in with a debate on who should be the next European Commissioner, I am happy to go along with that.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will be glad to know that he will have an opportunity to raise that issue in the debate on the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday. During that debate, I hope it will be possible to make it plain how the Government have already acted, such that non-EU net migration is down by a third; non-EU migration is at the lowest level since the late 1990s; economic immigration from outside the EU is capped; for those from within the EU, jobseeker benefits are limited to just six months and entitlement to housing benefit has been removed; and EU migrants are barred from re-entry following removal. The Opposition and the Government share the view that it is important to enforce the minimum wage. We are increasing the maximum fine for payment below the minimum wage to £20,000 per employee.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Free and fair elections are fundamental to all of us. Further to the elections in Tower Hamlets on 22 May, with allegations of intimidation outside polling stations and irregularities inside, anomalies with postal voting, the chaos of a four-and-a-half-day count, and yesterday a statement from the Metropolitan police that there have been arrests in connection with these elections, can the Leader of the House advise me whether I should look out for a statement from the Department for Communities and Local Government on local government, from the Home Office on the police, from the Cabinet Office on the Electoral Commission, or whether another Department will take a lead on this very important matter for east London?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. The Government completely share his view that the integrity of our elections is absolutely central to our democracy. As he knows, returning officers are responsible for the running of elections, and Parliament has given the power to monitor the conduct of elections to the Electoral Commission. It is therefore crucial that the commission ensure a swift investigation into any issues of concern in Tower Hamlets, and that it establish the truth and communicate it, including through the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised the point because it enables us to say that if anybody in Tower Hamlets knows of anything that causes concern about the integrity of the election, we encourage them to ring 101 and contact the police.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
Some 5,260 businesses in Harrogate and Knaresborough should benefit from the changes to the employment allowance that the Government are making to employer national insurance contributions. Across the country, those changes add up to £1 billion off the cost base of companies, and smaller companies will benefit disproportionately. May we have a debate to explore the impact of business tax changes on job creation, and on how rolling back the tax on jobs boosts employment and business growth?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend raises a timely point. Right now many businesses are appreciating the importance of that employment allowance in reducing the costs of employment. The changes are proportionately much more significant for smaller businesses and those taking on additional staff as they grow, which is tremendous. My hon. Friend will have an opportunity to debate the issue with colleagues in the Queen’s Speech debate on Wednesday next week, and I hope we might also get an answer from the Leader of the Opposition that we did not get yesterday. When we came to office, we immediately scrapped Labour’s proposed jobs tax. We have further reduced the cost of employment, and seen employment rise by more than 1.5 million. The Labour party now appears to propose that if it ever gets its hands on the levers of power again, one of the first things it will do will be to increase the jobs tax significantly again.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The news this morning about the death of a baby in hospital and 14 others who are seriously injured concerns not only the families and parents but staff in hospitals. Will the Leader of the House speak to the Health Secretary and ensure that he comes to the House to explain what happened and to reassure parents and Members of Parliament? Across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, this matter has caused ripples of concern to each and every one of us.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that matter. I am sure that all Members of the House want to express our deepest sympathy to the parents and family of the baby who died, and indeed our concern to the other parents whose children were infected and have suffered, but who hopefully are now recovering. As the hon. Gentleman may have heard, these issues are being pursued rapidly and urgently by Public Health England and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. It is clear from what they have said that the batch that may have been infected—we do not know precisely how, but this is where the evidence points—has been recalled. That batch has a short shelf life, so there is no prospect of further infections as a consequence. I feel strongly about this because two of the infected babies were at Addenbrooke’s hospital in my constituency. The first thing was to ensure that no further risk will result from this unfortunate event, and the second is to investigate and ensure that we know what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent it from happening again. If it is to do with the manufacturing process, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is responsible for that. I know that my hon. Friends at the Department of Health will want to report to the House when those two agencies have thoroughly completed their work.
Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend share my disappointment that the Opposition have not—for the second year running, I think—allocated a day during the debate on the Queen’s Speech to foreign affairs or defence? Perhaps he could organise that in Government time. There are many things going on in the world that cannot always be debated in these circumstances but on which we need a debate. Also, the Opposition have been talking about pubs, but does he agree that the last time they were in charge of the brewery, they could not organise any form of event at all?
Mr Lansley
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend: it is regrettable. Obviously, competing issues require time during debates on the Queen’s Speech—it is the Opposition’s choice in these matters—but for two years in a row they have chosen not to debate foreign affairs or defence. Frankly, this year, when the events in Syria and Ukraine are immediate, critical and of widespread concern, it is regrettable that the Opposition did not give the House an opportunity to have a debate of that kind.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I think we are all agreed that we need an urgent debate on international affairs. In that respect, will the Leader of the House be more precise about when the Prime Minister will make a statement after the G7 summit? He was unable to say categorically that that would be the case. Will he confirm that there will be an opportunity at the appropriate time for a debate on the renewal or otherwise of the US-UK mutual defence agreement, which comes up for review this year and should be debated properly by this House, so that we can understand our relationship militarily with the United States and, of course, with NATO?
Mr Lansley
I must confess—the hon. Gentleman will no doubt correct me if I am wrong—that I do not recall a debate taking place previously on the US-UK mutual defence agreement.
Mr Lansley
He does correct me. I will look at the precedent and we will discuss internally whether a debate of that kind is appropriate. Clearly, in the run-up to the NATO summit, which we are pleased the United Kingdom will be hosting in Wales at the beginning of September, those issues will be important in themselves, and the UK-US defence relationship is an instrumental part of that.
On the point about a statement following the G7, the fact is simply that this Prime Minister has made more statements than any of his predecessors and is always willing to come to inform the House. However, at this point I am not in a position to confirm a statement or its timing. In part, that will depend—as all statements do—on the nature of the event to which the statement refers. We are waiting to see the outcome of the discussions taking place in and around the G7 meeting, to see the extent to which it is necessary to announce changes in policy, or events, to the House.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I welcome, and thank Ministers for, the news that the Government have adopted in a Government Bill a number of the key measures in my ten-minute rule Bill on patients’ rights to patient data, which hon. Members lucky enough to be drawn high in the ballot next week might like to consider—a Bill for the integration of health and care records for all patients across the NHS and the care sector, which is key to raising standards and preventing some of the appalling events that we saw uncovered through the Francis report. May we have a debate on the importance of medical records in three key areas: supporting research for 21st-century medicines; driving the revolution of accountability and transparency; and the revolution of empowerment, which is key to 21st-century medicine?
Mr Lansley
I hope my hon. Friend knows that I share his sense of how profoundly important the proper use of the UK’s asset, or in this instance, England’s asset—NHS data—can be. When patients and the public generally are asked whether they are content for their data to be used to enable treatments and research to be promoted for all patients in future, as long as we give them the proper protection for their anonymity and confidentially, they are very much in favour. That is the point we are trying to get to.
My hon. Friend mentions something that will be important this coming week: that Back-Bench colleagues take every opportunity to put their names forward for the private Members’ Bill ballot. He instances one issue, but it would be very much in the interests of the people of this country if a number of others were brought forward under the banner of a private Member’s Bill.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) pointed out how little legislation the Government are bringing forward, but they are also evading accountability to this House on a week-by-week basis. In the four months between the beginning of May and the beginning of September, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will come to the Chamber only once to answer oral questions. Will the Leader of the House tell us what the Department has to hide?
Mr Lansley
I am not sure the hon. Lady understands that the rota for questions is a standard process. When the House is sitting, we answer questions in the normal way. I have to say that the premise of her question is somewhat misplaced. As I explained to the shadow Leader, 20 Bills were passed in the previous parliamentary Session. In the penultimate Session of the previous Parliament, 18 Bills were passed.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
In the light of the European Commission’s report on the UK economy, may we please have a debate on the unwanted interference in this country’s affairs by unelected Brussels bureaucrats? Considering the economic performance of the eurozone, surely they are the last people the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be taking advice from.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will recognise that to some extent the reporting process is a hangover from the convergence processes that were agreed many years ago in relation to the euro. We have to recognise that it is perfectly proper for any organisation, whether governmental or otherwise, to issue economic reports and to offer comments. What is critical is what we are achieving—that is what really matters. The European Commission and other countries are very much looking to achieve right across the eurozone—we have heard other countries make this very clear—the kind of dynamism in growth and job creation that we are seeing in this country. That is not happening at the moment and we want it to happen in the future. I think the message is heading more in that direction than it is in the other.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
In the past few weeks I have had representations from many constituents about delays in the Passport Office. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of these problems, and will he make time for a ministerial statement on what action will be taken to resolve them?
Mr Lansley
Yes, I am aware of that—indeed, I have raised constituency cases of my own. I will, if I may, ask my hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Immigration at the Home Office to make a written statement to the House to explain what is happening, the nature of the delays and what steps are being taken to reduce them.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
A number of my constituents have raised with me their concerns that the long-awaited Bill to ban wild animals from circuses was not included in the Queen’s Speech. A number of us have supported such legislation for several years—indeed, this House has resolved that such legislation should be passed. Given that the Bill need not be that long, what are the reasons for the its not being included in the Queen’s Speech? Will the Leader of the House seek to correct that at the earliest opportunity?
Mr Lansley
The reason is very straightforward: we had more bids for parliamentary time than we had time. We have to be robust in prioritising the measures we bring forward. We are prioritising measures that, as my hon. Friend will have seen in the Gracious Address, further promote the economic recovery and a fairer society. What he says is important and we will, as we have said previously, find time for it when parliamentary time allows.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), I would welcome a debate on that issue. Under the previous Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) pledged to ban wild animals in circuses. The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), with cross-party support, has a draft Bill that the Government have now brought forward, yet, as the hon. Member for Kettering said, there is no action from the Government. Will the Leader of the House give a commitment that this will happen during the last nine months of this Parliament in one shape or another?
Mr Lansley
I cannot give that commitment. In the Gracious Address we explained the Bills that we were proposing to bring forward. In a Session that, by its nature, can last no more than nine months and has a number of carry-over Bills, and with no scope to carry over Bills from this Session, there is a limit on the number of Government Bills. We have announced where our priorities lie, and, for the moment, time does not permit us to go beyond that.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
So much happened in Suffolk over the recess but I will restrict myself to one matter: actions being taken by the Food Standards Agency on outdoor pigs, of which there are a lot in Suffolk. I am very concerned about heavy-handed regulations, and it seems that a deal has been done with the marketing agency to require only outdoor pigs, as opposed to the vast majority of pigs, to be tested for trichinella. Will the Leader of the House ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on this important matter?
Mr Lansley
I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to respond to my hon. Friend on that matter, but if she wishes to raise it, I point out that DEFRA questions next Thursday would provide a suitable opportunity.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
Last year I persuaded HMRC to investigate employment agencies in my constituency. It found that 12 were not paying the minimum wage to some of their workers. On 12 February in this House, the Prime Minister promised me that he would overcome Treasury resistance to naming and shaming them. It is now June and that still has not happened. Will the Leader of the House look into it and give the Prime Minister a nudge?
Mr Lansley
I shall of course look into it. I remember the Prime Minister saying that, and I am sure that he delivers on all his promises. I am sure that we are delivering on enforcement on the minimum wage in a way that did not happen in the last Parliament, when there were very few enforcements. We are increasing penalties, and as the hon. Gentleman will have seen in the Queen’s Speech, we are proposing to make sure that the minimum wage is properly enforced.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
In my constituency we are seeing a welcome increase in house building and, in particular, extra care homes, including 300 care homes for returning service men and women of the Royal Signals, who are to be based in Stafford. May we have a debate on not only the number but the type of homes we need? Many of my constituents say that what they would really like are small, single-storey and energy-efficient homes to allow them to downsize and free up those two, three and four-bedroom family homes of which I think sometimes we build too many.
Mr Lansley
I am glad that my hon. Friend refers to those positive developments in Stafford, and to the kind of homes that are being built and the purposes for which they are built. That is welcome. From the dreadful low point that we inherited from the previous Government, we are seeing more housing starts. We are promoting house building, and as my hon. Friend will have seen in the Queen’s Speech, we will take yet more measures to stimulate house building further, including in garden cities, and in terms of the availability of more land from public sector assets. The type of housing is an interesting question. I agree that we need an increase in care homes, as we have an ageing population. That will enable older people to move out of large and increasingly expensive family homes that they no longer need to something that they feel is very much theirs without compromising on the quality of housing. My hon. Friend may have an opportunity to debate this today in the course of the subjects for debate on the Queen’s Speech.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
When can we debate the need to provide closure for the grieving families of the 179 brave British soldiers who were killed in the Iraq war? They demand the truth, the whole truth and every syllable of the truth, and not a censored Chilcot report that will, in John Major’s view, result in suspicions that will fester for years of an establishment cover-up?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman will have seen that an agreement was reached during the prorogation between Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry and the Government about the terms on which information will be made available and can be published. That is very much welcome, and it enables us to look forward to the publication of the Chilcot inquiry.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
May we have a debate on schools admission policies and the appeals process because some parents in my part of west Yorkshire—the Colne and Holme valleys and Lindley—are struggling with the process of trying to get their children into good-quality local schools, which are overcrowded, and sometimes struggling even to get their children into schools where they already have siblings?
Mr Lansley
I completely sympathise with my hon. Friend, not least because I know from similar constituency cases about the importance parents attach to this endeavour and about the frustrations they often suffer in trying to understand some of the criteria that apply to school admissions. The admissions code was reformed under the last Government and has been further improved under this one, but if I may, I will ask my right hon. Friends at the Department for Education to come back to my hon. Friend on this issue, which would be helped if he were able to add further information about this particular case.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Like all Members, I welcome the falling levels of unemployment, but what I do not welcome is the explosion in the number of low-paid, part-time jobs with individuals often placed on zero-hours contracts. When will the House have the opportunity to have a full and proper debate about rising levels of in-work poverty?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Lady might like to note that full-time employment was up on the last quarter by 176,000 and that 573,000 more people are in full-time work than a year ago. This is not just about an increase in part-time employment because there has been a substantial increase in full-time employment. The truth of the matter is that we are seeing not only big increases in employment, but increases in wages, too. As can be seen from the March data, the increase in wages was slightly higher than the increase in inflation.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the conduct of SpAds—special advisers—because the Prime Minister is clearly not going to sack Cabinet Ministers over the unseemly rows we have seen between the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary? The conduits for some of the most poisonous briefings are SpAds, and that is in breach of the code of conduct. According to press reports, Fiona Cunningham, the Home Secretary’s special adviser, had her card marked in March for this kind of behaviour. Will the Prime Minister now sack her, or is he too weak to act?
Mr Lansley
Let me reiterate what I said earlier: my colleagues and their teams are working together well for this purpose. We have robust discussions inside government. Can the hon. Gentleman honestly look me in the eye and tell me that the robust discussions we have inside this Government are worse than the kind of discussions that took place under the previous Government? They are not worse, and the hon. Gentleman knows it. The last Government were riven; this Government are working together as a coalition and between parties in this Government.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
May we have an urgent debate on the importance of volunteering to our communities and to many local organisations? I understand that you, Mr Speaker, will be attending an event on this very subject in Cardiff this evening. Tomorrow, together with other Members, I will attend cross-party events to support volunteers in our communities for the difference they make to them.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue. Volunteers week, in the first week of June, provides an important opportunity every year to say a big thank you to the millions of volunteers across the UK for their fantastic contribution. We are putting in place measures and funds to grow volunteering opportunities. We have invested £20 million in 40 organisations through the social action fund. That in itself has created opportunities for more than half a million new volunteers. I hope that we will all, as he rightly says, take the opportunity this week to celebrate volunteers in our constituencies.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
The Crown court in Hull has come to a near standstill owing to the fact that criminal solicitors are refusing to apply for legal aid representation orders in Crown court proceedings. So bad is the situation that the recorder of Hull Crown court has issued a practice direction advising defendants who are unrepresented how to conduct the proceedings. May we please have an urgent debate on this issue and the fact that the criminal justice system is in complete chaos due to the Lord Chancellor simply not understanding the issues?
Mr Lansley
On the contrary. There is a central issue here: across Government, we must cut our coat according to our cloth. We must make savings, and that includes savings in a legal aid budget which, as the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, was by far and away the most generous in the developed world. Making those savings has entailed difficult decisions. However, the hon. Gentleman raised important points in relation to Hull. I entirely understand why he did so, and I will ask my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to respond to him on those points.
Points of Order
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Further to the earlier exchange about the non-availability of information to Members, may I point out that at 10.15 this morning the Vote Office had still not received the written ministerial statement from the Leader of the House which is listed on today’s Order Paper? The Vote Office claims that it did not receive the link to the press briefing until 5 pm yesterday. Can anything be done to make the Leader of the House sort out the mess and investigate what is going on?
Mr Speaker
I think that the best course of action is for me to cause inquiries to be made about the timing of delivery, and, when I am in a better position to know exactly what happened, I can revert to the House if necessary, or alternatively to the principals. I do not think that we need to play it out further at this stage.
Mr Speaker
I feel sure that it is a point of order rather than one of frustration.
Mike Gapes
In view of the answer that I received from the Leader of the House, may I ask whether it would be possible to have an early response from the Secretary of State for Health to confirm that his Department and his officials were in no way involved in the breach of purdah which I am alleging took place in my constituency on 20 May?
Mr Speaker
Not for nothing has the hon. Gentleman been the sturdy representative of his constituency for the last 22 years. He is no stranger to the use of the parliamentary device of the point of order to convey his message, and I am sure that it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench. I think that we can leave it there, unless the Leader of the House feels an urgent desire to spring to his feet—of which, I confess, I detect no sign.
May I now ask for the understanding of the House as we undergo a formulaic but necessary procedure in respect of a number of Bills?
Bills Presented
Debate on the Address
Petition
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
The petition was organised by the pupils of Sugar Hill primary school in Newton Aycliffe in Sedgefield in my constituency, where they managed to collect 212 signatures.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Sedgefield,
Declares that 200 Nigerian school girls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram and further that the Petitioners believe that more could be done internationally to ensure their safe release.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the UK government to do all in its power to ensure that the 200 kidnapped school girls are released and returned to their families.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001356]
Cost of Living: Energy and Housing
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Yesterday’s Gracious Speech marks another step in this coalition’s work to secure Britain’s economic recovery. With the infrastructure Bill, the small business Bill and the Childcare Payments Bill, this Queen’s Speech continues the central purpose of this coalition—not just to rebuild the shattered economy we inherited, but to promote a new economy with sustainable growth and employment for all, so the British people can enjoy a stronger economy and a fairer society.
The coalition’s long-term economic plan is all about raising living standards for everyone in our country, but to do that we have to tackle the country’s economic problems head-on. We cannot duck the difficult decisions even when they come at a political price. To do the right thing for our country in the appalling circumstances in which we found ourselves in 2010 was always going to take courage and I am genuinely proud to serve a Deputy Prime Minister and a Prime Minister who have both had that courage even though both have experienced difficulties in our respective parties as a result. Let us look at where their courage has taken our country.
Our economy is growing again; indeed, no other major economy grew faster in the last year. Our deficit is falling steadily, responsibly—not as fast as some people argued for, but at a pace that has kept interest rates low and enabled employment to rise. There is nothing of which my colleagues and I are more proud than this coalition’s record on jobs: unemployment down in the last year alone by over 300,000 and employment up at record levels, increasing by over 720,000 last year alone.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way so early in what sounded like his peroration. Will he comment on the UK’s decline in stature in terms of the renewables industry, which has come out in recent reports, and also on the speculation that numerous applications for onshore wind energy have been declined by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government? Can the Energy Secretary tell us how many have been declined against official advice?
Mr Davey
Renewable electricity has more than doubled under this Government. The situation we inherited from the last Government was that we were at the bottom of the European league—no, I should correct the record: we were above Malta and Luxembourg—but now our position has improved significantly. I would have thought the hon. Gentleman would have welcomed that. We have put in place an excellent regime for investment in renewables and all low-carbons. The Ernst and Young report he refers to shows us to be the best place in the world to invest in offshore wind and tidal energy, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Secretary and I are very proud of the fact that we have increased onshore wind so substantially and that there is such a healthy pipeline of future investment in it.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Malta: does he agree that his economic policy has led to a situation where child mortality below the age of five in Britain is now the highest in any western country other than Malta? One in 200 children is now dying under the age of five because of the brutality against the poorest. The university of Washington has related that to food banks, austerity and welfare. Does the Energy Secretary have anything to say about that? I doubt it.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
When the right hon. Gentleman said that some people said that they wanted to go a little bit faster in paying down the deficit, was he referring to the Chancellor, who had promised that it would be got rid of in this Parliament?
Mr Davey
Many commentators thought we should cut the deficit faster, but we have taken a very responsible approach, to ensure not only that interest rates were kept low—that has been so vital for many families and the hon. Lady’s constituents—but that employment has risen so well. I would have thought she would be welcoming that.
The problem is that the Opposition used to criticise the coalition on unemployment—they used to say that unemployment was going to go up—but when the facts showed they were wrong and that unemployment has gone down they have had to change their economic argument. The Opposition keep changing the economic argument because they keep losing the economic argument. Let us examine their recent economic argument on the cost of living. I presume that everyone in this House accepts that the key measure of the cost of living remains the inflation figures. So if the cost of living is the measure by which to judge this coalition, let us see what has been happening to inflation. Inflation is lower than when the previous Government left office and it is falling.
I have to confess to the House that the Bank of England’s inflation target is not being hit—inflation is lower than the target. In March, inflation had slowed to just 1.6%. Of course for our constituents it is real incomes and real wages that actually matter: what people have to spend after tax and after inflation. Looking at things in that way, it is true that after the 2008 recession many people saw living standards fall. But let us remind ourselves what happened: a huge £113 billion was wiped off our economy in the great financial crash of 2008, and there was a £3,000 cost to every household in the United Kingdom. To put that right, and to keep employment rising, it was arithmetically inevitable that living standards could not rise in the turnaround period for our economy, but now we really are in recovery. Now it is not just employment that is rising—it is living standards too. How has that happened? Of course, it has been because of the coalition’s long-term economic plan.
Key aspects of that plan are really beginning to help, above all the implementation of the Liberal Democrat manifesto policy to increase the tax-free allowance to £10,000 a year. Our record not just of implementing this fairest of tax cuts, but doing more than we promised is helping more than 26 million people. It has taken 3.2 million low paid out of income tax and it has cut the income tax bill of a double-earning couple on average earnings by £1,600 a year. This Liberal-Democrat-turned-coalition policy has cut the number of low-income people paying income tax more in five years than any other Government have achieved in the same period since records began.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
Before the Secretary of State diverts on to a partisan frolic, may I ask whether he welcomes the British Retail Consortium’s data out this week showing that competition between supermarkets has led to a decline in non-food prices of 2.8%? Does he also welcome the fact that food inflation is at 0.7%, its lowest level since 2006?
Sheila Gilmore
Before the Secretary of State leaves the issue of tax allowances, does he not accept that for many of the lowest-paid workers the reduction in tax was more than outweighed by the reduction in tax credits? Moreover, the cost of this policy benefited higher earners disproportionately. That does not sound to me to be a very Liberal Democrat policy.
Mr Davey
I am afraid that the hon. Lady is completely wrong. Higher rate taxpayers did not get the allowance increase. This is one of the fairest tax cuts, because it is focused on the low-paid and people on moderate incomes. I must say that she does not understand how the tax system works.
Jeremy Corbyn
As the Secretary of State is talking about living standards, is he proud of the fact that many people living in the private rented sector in central London and other big cities are being socially cleansed out of their homes by a combination of high rents and benefit caps? Does he not think that that is a disgrace, that those communities are being damaged and that those children’s life chances are also being damaged? Should he not do something about it?
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman has been a champion in the debate on housing in London for many years. I do not think that he can point to any halcyon days over the past 30 years. The cost of housing was the biggest issue when I became an MP in 1997, and for many of my constituents it remains the biggest issue. There have been changes, but many of the housing benefit changes that we have made have actually hit the landlords, not the tenants. I think that he ought to welcome that.
I am very proud of our record of helping people on low incomes, and not only the personal tax allowance increases, but the rest of our help with the cost of living—fuel duty freezes, council tax freezes, free school meals and help with child care. The coalition has listened and is helping. Of course, all those measures take time to feed through. Everyone knows that in some parts of the country people are yet to feel the turnaround, and that was always inevitable. Many people are only now beginning to experience the end of the post-recession squeeze.
I think that what is worrying the Labour party is that in 10 months’ time many more people will be feeling the benefits of the recovery and Labour’s latest economic argument on the cost of living will look ever hollower. Of course, last summer the Opposition already began to switch their economic argument again. It was not the general cost of living or general inflation that they were talking about, or the full basket of goods that people buy; it was a few specific ones. That is why we have today’s debate on energy and housing costs. They are very important issues, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will, I am sure, take on the housing costs debate. I am sure that he will cover not only our record of low mortgage rates, but our record and our plans to build more houses to reduce housing costs.
However, I want to deal with energy costs, because, unlike the previous Government, we have acted on energy bills. We have taken on the energy companies, unlike the Leader of the Opposition when he was doing my job, when he could have acted but did not. It is interesting to look at the record on energy bills. In almost every year under Labour, energy bills rose: in 2005 they went up by 12%; in 2006 they went up by 20%; and in 2008 they went up by 16%. In the previous Parliament, under Labour, energy bills rose by a whopping 63%, and Labour did nothing. Yet they lecture us. Of course, bills have also risen in this Parliament, but by 8% a year, compared with 11% a year in the previous Parliament.
Labour did act to reform the energy markets; they managed the great feat of reducing the number of energy market firms and creating the big six. In other words, they made it worse and created another mess for us to clear up. This coalition is really reforming the energy market and taking on the energy companies. From day one, we began reforming the market to create real competition, with new competitors. Twelve new independent suppliers have entered the market since 2010, and independents are topping the best-buy tables, increasing their market share from less than 1% to 5% and rising, giving people a real chance not only to freeze their bills, but to cut them.
Just look at what has been done to help people with their energy bills: Ofgem’s reforms are making bills simpler and forcing firms to put consumers on the cheapest tariffs; switching rates are increasing, with switching speeds getting faster; and Government action is taking £50 off the average energy bill. Where the Opposition wanted to legislate for a freeze, with all the impact such regulatory intervention would have on investor confidence, the coalition has worked to ensure that the Government and competition are delivering something better than a freeze. Scottish and Southern Energy, British Gas, npower, Scottish Power and EDF have all announced that they will not increase energy prices this year unless network costs go up or wholesale energy costs rise, and of course they are not.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Given that we have just read this week that SSE will be raising its prices by 8%, that two of its directors have salaries of £1.4 million and that the price of gas is falling, it is absolutely extraordinary that the Secretary of State still thinks that the consumer should pay. What will he do to ensure that consumer prices come down in line with the proper price of gas? The ridiculous profits that these people are making should be stopped now.
Mr Davey
SSE has committed itself to a price freeze. The hon. Lady is right that the recent falls in wholesale gas prices suggest that consumers should benefit too. Unlike the previous Government, we have supported the regulator Ofgem in its proposal for the first ever referral of the energy markets to the independent competition authorities. The Leader of the Opposition talks about energy markets, but when he had the power to act, when he could have taken on the big six, and when he was doing my job, he did nothing. He refused three times to back an independent investigation of the energy markets, even though energy bills were rising faster than they are now. He let the energy companies off the hook and the party knows it.
Mr Davey
My hon. Friends may well be in Newark, but I have the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), here with me. It is interesting that that is the only point that the Opposition can make. I give way to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). He may well have a point of substance.
Barry Gardiner
The Secretary of State talked about the benefits to the consumer from competition in the energy market. He says that the Labour Government did not act properly in this way, but does he recall that of the 14 suppliers that existed when Labour came to power, there was no possibility for any customer to transfer their account from one to the other? What Labour did in creating new electricity trading arrangements and then the British electricity trading and transmission arrangements was to reform the market twice so that competition benefited the consumer.
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman is mixing up two things. The reforms to which he referred created the big six. There was a consolidation in the markets as a result of those reforms. What is helping competition is the ability to switch. What we have been doing is making that easier, simpler and faster, and that is the right thing to do. I am proud that we now have—or will shortly have when it is confirmed by Ofgem—a full-scale market investigation. The large energy companies will need to think very carefully about their pricing decisions. If they do not pass on falling wholesale costs, the competition authorities and, more importantly, their competitors will be very interested.
This autumn, I intend to ensure that British people know that if their energy supplier hikes up their prices, they will have a real choice to switch firms and cut their bills. The switching choices will be simpler, easier and quicker than ever before.
In this Session’s legislative programme, my Department will be putting forward a number of measures in the infrastructure Bill. First, I draw the House’s attention to our plans to introduce a community electricity right. Communities will be offered the chance to buy a stake in a new commercial renewable electricity scheme in their area. Community energy can play an increasingly important role in our energy mix, not least as we increase renewable energy in the UK.
When I published Britain’s first ever community energy strategy earlier this year, we showed how greater involvement by communities could significantly support our goals of decarbonising the power sector, increasing energy security, reducing bills and helping the fuel poor. One of the key aims of the strategy is to see greater community involvement and ownership of local renewable energy projects. We hope and believe that that will come about through voluntary agreement. A taskforce of industry and community energy specialists is already working out how a win-win can be achieved, with investors gaining greater public support and additional capital investment, and with communities receiving greater benefits and a greater stake.
Since we are pursuing a voluntary approach, the power in the Bill is a back-stop. The community energy sector was clear that the voluntary approach should be given a chance to succeed, and I agree. By legislating as proposed, we can send the strongest signal that Government and Parliament want to see both community energy and local shared ownership of renewable energy succeed. I hope that the measure will receive support from all parties.
Other key energy measures in the infrastructure Bill involve the implementation of the review that I commissioned into the future of Britain’s North sea assets, conducted so brilliantly by Sir Ian Wood. Given recent events in Crimea and Ukraine, we know more than ever that secure supplies of gas are vital to our economy, but cannot be taken for granted. As we cut our carbon emissions, with our dramatic shift out of coal over the next decade, we know that the replacement electricity must involve low-carbon electricity from renewables and nuclear and lower carbon electricity from gas. Our energy security and climate change objectives require gas, so we must conclude that our North sea oil and gas assets are at least as important now as they have always been.
In spite of rising and indeed record levels of investment in the North sea under the coalition, figures show declining production and exploration, which should worry us all. Gas imports have been rising for some time already and if we do not act to improve conditions in the North sea, our dependency on imported gas could reach worrying levels. As we implement the Wood recommendations, specifically to enable a new arm’s length regulator, I hope that we will get support from all parts of the House.
In order to ensure that the UK can benefit even more from its home-grown energy, we will introduce a final set of measures, subject to consultation, so that Britain can be more secure and reduce our reliance on imports and on coal. The measures are to support the development of the shale gas and geothermal industries. Although both industries are still in their infancy, they are both concerned that the existing legal situation could delay or even stop their ability to drill horizontally deep underground to recover gas or heat. Ironically, given the urgency of climate change and unlike the situation for dirty coal—a landowner or property owner high above a coal seam cannot object and delay work—for cleaner gas and clean heat, landowners and property owners can object.
To assist the shale gas and geothermal industries, we are consulting on how to address those access issues. We published our consultation paper on 23 May, and the consultation will run for the full 12 weeks. Members of the House may respond to that consultation, as may all interested parties. We want feedback and input, because that will help us to refine our proposals, to develop alternative ones or even to convince us that the existing system is fit for purpose. We will listen during the consultation and, subject to its outcome, we will introduce proposals when parliamentary time allows.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
This is of great interest to my constituents, because we envisage drilling to explore the possibilities for shale gas in our area in the coming months. Will the Secretary of State repeat the assurance that the Prime Minister gave in response to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) yesterday, that there will be no circumstances in which someone may legally drill under people’s property without their consent and agreement?
Mr Davey
I am not sure whether the Prime Minister said that in those terms. There will be local community engagement in issues about fracking, not least through the planning process. There will be local involvement, because a company has to get a series of permits and regulatory permissions before it may even start an exploratory drill, which should give the hon. Lady’s constituents and other people the reassurances that they need.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I do not know whether the Secretary of State read the comments of Sir Merrick Cockell, the chair of the Local Government Association. Speaking on a cross-party basis, he said that he thought that the benefits or payments to the community promised to areas in which fracking takes place are simply not large enough, considering the enormous amount of revenue to be gained by the companies from fracking activities, in particular given the tax breaks. Will the Government think again about that to ensure that local communities get a lot more benefit from such activities?
Mr Davey
We have already put in place a package of attractive community benefits and as we proceed with the consultation, the hon. Gentleman might want to respond to it. There is talk of further community benefits, but let us be clear what we are talking about. We are talking about drilling at least 300 metres under a piece of land or property, far more than for the underground, the channel tunnel and all those other major pieces of infrastructure. Most shale and geothermals are at least one mile below the service and I think that landowners will be quite pleased to get compensation for that, because it will not affect their land or properties.
Geraint Davies
I want to ask about the concerns about waste water. There are examples in America of millions of tonnes of water being moved, destroying roads and the environment, and of its becoming contaminated and even radioactive and toxic in some cases, and there were issues with cleaning it, which contaminated the water table. I have heard of companies in Britain that want to do water treatment being turned away by prospective developers who seem to think that decontaminating the water is not a big issue.
Mr Davey
First, we have a strong regulatory regime for water, overseen by the Environment Agency. Before people can take water from water courses or put things beneath the ground, they have to get a permit. More than that, if we consider what is happening within industry processes and with some of the research and development that is going on in this area, we can see that the push for what are called “green completions” in the fracking industry is very strong. We are seeing companies minimise their use of water compared with the early years in the United States because it is in their interests and will reduce the amount of vehicle movement. This is a serious issue and I take it seriously. As I hope the hon. Gentleman can see, I have looked into it in some detail and we will continue to monitor that carefully.
Time has not allowed me to update the House on many aspects of our work that feed into the Bill and the Gracious Speech, most notably on our massive work on the international climate change debate. As the Gracious Speech says, Ministers will
“champion efforts to secure a global agreement on climate change.”
I can report to the House that Britain is leading in Europe, persuading European colleagues to go further and to adopt more ambitious climate change targets, just as this Parliament has done, and persuading European colleagues to agree to radical reforms of Europe’s carbon market, which is so crucial in encouraging investment in renewables, energy efficiency, nuclear and carbon capture and storage. The green growth group that I established in Europe 16 months ago has helped to lead that critical debate and a key task for the next five months up to the October European Council is to secure the deal Britain has helped to create. If we achieve that deal in October, Europe can then help to lead the rest of the world as we prepare for the critical climate change summit in Paris in December 2015, working with the United States of America after President Obama’s magnificent announcement this week on regulating coal plants.
The Government are delivering on growth and on green growth, on jobs and on green jobs. We have pulled our economy from the abyss and towards a sustainable, affordable future.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
The Government’s record is simple: since they came to power, working people have seen their pay fall by £1,600 a year on average, and by the end of this Parliament, people will be worse off than at the beginning. That is a record that no other Government can match, but it is not one to be proud of. The averages and statistics provide only a glimpse of what is happening to families caught in the cost of living crisis. It is a crisis that runs deep into people’s lives and deep into our country, because something fundamental has happened. The link between the wealth of our nation and everyday family finances has been broken, so the single biggest challenge facing our country is to restore that link so that growing prosperity is shared by all and not just a few at the top. On that challenge, this Queen’s Speech falls badly short. Today, I want to set out why it fails, and how Labour would take immediate action to deal with the pressures facing families and make the big long-term changes that we need so that hard-working people are better off.
Let us start with energy. There were suggestions yesterday that communities would be given the right to purchase a stake in local renewable energy projects, which was one of the community energy ideas in “The Power Book” which we published back in 2012. If that is what the Government are announcing, we welcome it and we look forward to more information on how and when it will apply.
We also heard that, subject to their consultation, the Government intend to bring forward legislation to give oil and gas developers underground access rights without requiring landowner permission. We have always been clear that provided it can be done in a safe and environmentally sustainable way, we will support shale gas exploration, but we have set out six conditions which we believe need to be met, four of which the Government have agreed to. That leaves two—first, an assessment of groundwater methane levels, and secondly, ensuring that all this monitoring is done for a full 12 months before any drilling can proceed, so as to ensure that we have robust baseline measurements to which we can always refer back. That is one of the lessons we need to take on board from the American experience, which did not go as well there.
As the Secretary of State mentioned, the changes to underground access rights announced in the Queen’s Speech will put shale gas on the same footing as other industries such as coal, water and sewage, so we will not oppose them, but we will continue to push for the environmental framework to be strengthened, and for assurances that the responsibility for clean-up costs and liability for any untoward consequences rests fairly and squarely with the industry, not with taxpayers or homeowners.
However, as the Secretary of State knows, companies have only exploratory licences, so full shale gas production is still some years away. Even if it does happen, unless we see significant shale production not just in Britain but right across of Europe, most experts believe it will have little effect on gas prices in the UK. The idea that it will in any way help with the cost of living that people are facing in relation to energy prices is therefore pretty wide of the mark.
One would not know it from the Secretary of State’s complacent speech, but in real terms energy bills have risen three times faster under this Government than under the previous one. The average family’s energy bill is now £300 a year higher than it was back in 2010, and businesses say energy is the second biggest cost they face. The consequences are being felt around the country. Figures out this week show that more than 1.5 million households are in debt to their supplier—saddled with more than £1 billion-worth of debt. If the Government had published their annual fuel poverty statistics last month, as I believe they were meant to, I imagine we would see the fuel poverty gap—the gap between people’s bills and what they can afford—increasing too. Perhaps the Secretary of State could enlighten us today on whether that is the case and explain why these statistics were not published.
On Tuesday we learned that in the past year alone the profit margins of the big six energy companies from supplying gas and electricity have doubled, so what is there in the Queen’s Speech to help bill payers? What is there to stop companies exploiting their customers? Nothing. The Secretary of State spoke about the Government’s dodgy deal with the energy companies, which he claimed had cut the average bill by £50, but let me remind the House of a few things that he forgot to mention. He forgot to say that because the energy companies increased bills by, on average, £110 at the same time as cutting green levies, the average family’s bill is still more than £60 higher than last year. He forgot to say that 3.7 million households on fixed price deals will not even receive the full saving, even though the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) said it was “not acceptable” for the energy companies to fail to pass it on.
The Secretary of State forgot to say how the Government cobbled this deal together—a £5 cut in network charges, to be repaid in full next year, with interest; £12 from the warm home discount moved from people’s bills to their taxes, and somewhere between £30 and £40 of cuts to vulnerable and hard-to-treat households, which should have got help with energy efficiency and insulation through the energy company obligation. That amounts to 440,000 fewer households getting help to make their homes warmer. These are the people who have been made to pay, not the energy companies.
Then we heard the Secretary of State wax lyrical about the impending market investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority. I have been clear that we support the market investigation. I have also said that the review should cover the role of the regulator too, because one cannot properly investigate a market without looking at how it is regulated. The very fact that Ofgem has deemed it necessary to refer this industry to the competition authorities is an admission that the market is not working for consumers. Yet the review will take 18 months to complete and has not even been given the go-ahead yet. The test for the Government was what they would do to help households and businesses in the meantime, and on that test this Queen’s Speech fails.
I can tell the House exactly what we would do if this were Labour’s Queen’s Speech. We would protect households from any more unfair price hikes by freezing energy bills for 20 months. That would stop suppliers increasing their prices, but of course they would still be able to cut them. We would also begin the work of reforming the market. Consumers will not thank us if we use the CMA investigation as an excuse to avoid dealing with problems we can fix now. For instance, one of the biggest barriers to proper competition in this market, and one of the main reasons people find it difficult to trust the industry, is that companies can generate power and sell it from one arm of the business to another, at prices that are never disclosed, before finally selling it on to the public.
We could fix that problem quite straightforwardly by introducing a ring fence between the generation and retail arms of energy companies. We are not talking about companies being forced to divest bits of their business, although of course that may be something for the CMA to consider; we are simply talking about the way in which these companies operate becoming transparent. In fact, some suppliers already claim to operate in such a way. SSE has said, following the publication of Labour’s Green Paper on energy market reform, that it will legally separate its generation and retail businesses. So why wait? The CMA might report back with additional measures that need to be implemented, but if there are things we can do now to make this market work for the public and restore trust, then we should do them.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I commend my right hon. Friend for laying out the measures that would have been in an alternative Labour Queen’s Speech. Will she confirm that another measure would have dealt with the one in five or one in six people who are in rural off-grid households and who currently have no protection? One of the greatest measures we could have brought forward would be to allow those people to have their winter fuel payment paid early, so that they have the flexibility to buy at times of the year when the prices for off-grid oil, and so on, are much cheaper.
Caroline Flint
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I commend the fantastic work he is doing with rural communities the length and breadth of Britain and thank him for the support he has given my team in addressing some of the issues facing households who are off the grid. As he says, for those off the grid this is an equally disappointing Queen’s Speech. There is nothing on bringing forward winter fuel payments, which would allow people to buy their heating oil when it is cheaper, or on bringing those who are off-grid under the energy regulator so that they can enjoy some of the protections that everybody else would enjoy. Labour would have put both those measures in a Queen’s Speech.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am pleased that Labour has now supported early winter fuel payments, for which I have been pushing for some time. Does the right hon. Lady recognise that one of the other problems is that the energy company obligation does not include off-grid boilers? Would Labour be prepared to push forward a measure on that? [Interruption.]
Caroline Flint
I am hearing from different parts of the House that the ECO does and does not allow it. Clearly, we must have an energy efficiency and insulation programme that meets the needs of various communities in the different circumstances in which they find themselves. With my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), I am working through a number of proposals and listening to communities about what would work. I am also listening to those working in the sector, as well as those who supply oil and gas and those who want to see what they can do to help more with energy and insulation. We are looking into this in greater detail.
That leads me to my next point. In the long term, the most sustainable way to cut people’s energy bills is to improve the energy efficiency and insulation of our housing stock. Despite the progress made under the previous Government, who helped more than 2 million households through Warm Front and millions more through the decent homes programme, Britain still has some of the least energy-efficient housing stock anywhere in Europe. Some 80% of our stock today will still be around in 2050, and this Government’s green deal, which I remind the House was billed as the biggest home improvements programme since world war two, has been an abject failure. Just 2,500 households have signed up for a green deal package. To put that figure in context, it is only slightly more than the number of Liberal Democrat councillors left after the party’s collapse in the local elections a couple of weeks ago, including on Kingston council in the Secretary of State’s area.
We have a big enough challenge bringing our existing stock up to scratch without having to worry about retrofitting the housing we are building now. That is why, when in government, Labour set a target that every new home built in Britain would have to be built to, or as near as possible to, a zero-carbon standard by 2016. In this Queen’s Speech, however, we have the bizarre but not uncommon spectacle of the Liberal Democrats trying to claim credit for a policy that was actually introduced seven years ago and which they have undermined. That is exactly what they are doing: taking our zero-carbon homes policy, exempting developments of up to 50 homes, watering down the standards for larger developers, and then wanting credit for it. Whatever the short-term benefits, in the long term there is a real risk that these decisions will leave consumers stuck with homes that are not meeting the high standards of energy efficiency. Given the scale of the challenge we already face, that is a problem we could well afford to do without.
On housing more generally, the country is suffering from the biggest housing crisis in a generation: house building is at its lowest peacetime level since the 1920s; affordable home starts are down by a third since the election; and home ownership is falling further and further out of reach for young families. As a result, more and more people are having to rely on renting a home in the private sector, but the cost of renting has gone up, rising more than twice as fast as wages since the election, despite the prediction of the former Housing Minister and, if reports are to be believed, the soon-to-be former chair of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), who reassured us that rents would not go up. But they have gone up, and renters are getting a bad deal and are being forced to pay all kinds of unfair charges and fees.
Nothing is being done to provide the certainties that families need to plan for their future. What does this Queen’s speech have to offer them? Nothing. All we have is Help to Buy. Of course, any help for first-time buyers struggling to get on the property ladder is welcome, but why is a scheme that is meant to help first-time buyers allowing for taxpayer-based mortgages for homes worth up to £600,000? How many first-time buyers can afford homes worth £600,000? As more and more voices are warning, unless rising demand for housing is matched with rising supply, house prices will inflate even further, making home ownership even less affordable for those on lower-middle incomes.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) will set out in his speech later, if this were Labour’s Queen’s Speech, we know what we would do to get Britain building again, help people get on the housing ladder and give people who rent more security. We would get 200,000 homes built a year by 2020. We would unlock the supply of new homes by giving local authorities “use it or lose it” powers and boost the role of small house builders. We would legislate to make longer-term tenancies with predictable rents the norm and properly regulate letting agencies.
Like energy, water is another essential to life, but more than 2 million households are forced to spend more than 5% of their income on their water bills. At the moment, the water companies can choose whether or not to offer a social tariff to those customers who struggle the most. As a result, only three companies do so, and fewer than 25,000 households receive any help at all. That is just not good enough. If this were our Queen’s Speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) would use powers to establish a national affordability scheme, funded by the water companies, to ensure that help gets to those who need it and to put an end to the current postcode lottery.
As well as dealing with the problems that hold back our country, we should be making big, long-term changes to our economy so that we can grow and earn our way to a higher standard of living. Work should pay and people should always be better off in work than out of it. One reason it does not always feel like that is the rising cost of child care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) has highlighted, since the election the cost of a nursery place has risen five times faster than pay. There are 578 fewer Sure Start centres, and 35,000 fewer child care places. However, the Government’s new child care allowance will not even start until well after the next election. If this was our Queen’s Speech, we would expand free child care from 15 to 25 hours for working parents of three and four-year-olds to make work pay, and we would create a legal guarantee of access to wraparound child care for primary school children through their school from 8 am to 6 pm.
As my hon. Friends the Members for Streatham (Mr Umunna) and for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) will set out next week, there is so much more that the Government could and should have done in the Queen’s Speech. Let us take zero-hours contracts. We welcome the fact that the Government have adopted our policy of banning exclusivity clauses, but that is only one part of the problem. What about people working regular hours for month after month, or even for years, who are still on zero-hours contracts? This Queen’s Speech does not help them. What about strengthening the national minimum wage, tax breaks for firms that boost pay through the living wage, job guarantees for the young and long-term unemployed, or help for small businesses by cutting business rates and reforming the banks? That is the sort of Queen’s Speech that our country needs.
I am afraid that what we got yesterday was a series of half-baked measures, re-announcements and policies brought in to solve problems this Government created in the first place. Why was it necessary to include a Bill to deal with the problem of people leaving one part of the public sector with huge pay-offs only to be re-employed in another part? Let us be honest about this. It is because of the thousands of people who have done exactly that since the Government’s reorganisation of the NHS. Let us remember, when they talk about getting the banks to lend to small businesses, to ask why they are dealing with this problem only in the fifth year of this Government.
Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Government have fallen short. While family budgets were being squeezed throughout the country, the Government were in denial; from this Queen’s Speech, we can see that they still are. They crow about a recovery, but as the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said on Monday, ordinary people have not yet felt any sense of recovery. I agree: a recovery that does not benefit ordinary working people is no recovery at all, and the promise of Britain—that the next generation should do better than the last—is being broken.
The test of any Queen’s Speech is whether it deals with the challenges the country faces today and sets the foundation for our country to be stronger and more prosperous for the future. On both those counts, this Queen’s Speech fails. In 11 months’ time, the country will face a choice between a Britain where a few at the top do well and everyone else is left to take their chances, where people are working harder for longer for less, and where the powerful play by one set of rules and the rest of us live by a different one; and Labour’s vision of a Britain with fair play at its heart, where businesses pay their taxes, do not exploit migrant labour and have an apprenticeship scheme alongside any workers they bring in from abroad, where there are fair rules for things such as welfare, selling energy or coming into our country, where there are fair rewards for a country in which hard work pays, responsibility is rewarded and everyone shares in its success, and where there are fair chances for a country in which people do not have to be born into privilege to get on or to have a secure roof over their head and their life chances are not defined by the postcode in which they were born. That is Labour’s vision for Britain.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
Thank you for calling me so early in this debate, Mr Speaker. I commend both the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State for starting off our proceedings, but I am afraid that I will diverge from energy and housing issues to concentrate on other matters.
Although much has been said about the shortness of the Queen’s Speech—that it does not contain many measures—to my mind that is a quality. This House passes far too much legislation, and we ought to spend more time repealing legislation before we consider passing more. Although some say that its shortness is a fault of this Queen’s Speech, I say that it is a particular benefit.
There is one Bill in particular of which I am very fond: the pensions tax Bill. As a private Member, I introduced—I think in 2004—the Retirement Income Reform Bill, which intended to do away with the need for those at the age of 75 to buy an annuity. It passed Second Reading on a Friday afternoon, I think by a majority of 101. Unfortunately, the Labour Government crushed it. I hope that the Labour party has changed its mind and will support the Bill when it comes before the House again in the guise of the pensions tax Bill.
Another measure that I am particularly pleased to see in the Queen’s Speech which is not politically controversial is the modern slavery Bill. As a former law officer who has appeared in the criminal division of the Court of Appeal dealing with cases that concerned the trafficking of very vulnerable men and women from overseas to this country, some to be sexually abused and some to be abused in the world of employment, I am particularly pleased that the Government and, I hope, the House will pass that Bill in due course. It will add strength to the law that seeks to protect the victims of this most appalling form of criminal behaviour. We all know of examples of appalling gangmasters and people who traffic young girls and women into this country for sexual purposes. Anything that this House can do to protect the victims and to ensure that they are brought to a place of safety and allowed to lead fulfilling lives is much to be approved.
I want to see the modern slavery Bill advance for two other reasons. This morning, I received a letter from my constituent, Laura Palmer, who tells me that there is, in France, something called the Picard law. She writes that the law
“states it is illegal to take money off someone who has been mentally manipulated.”
That put me in mind of the case that was brought by the Moonies—the rather eccentric religious sect—some years ago against the Daily Mail, for which, I hasten to add, I was acting at the time. [Laughter.] It was a long time ago.
Sir Edward Garnier
I got married on the strength of the case, thank you very much. Indeed, I bought my first house on the strength of it. However, I want to make a serious point.
The sting of the libel in the case was that the Moonies brainwashed children and extracted money from them for the purposes of the Moonie organisation. Of course, a lot of those activities took place overseas, particularly in America. However, if the modern slavery Bill can criminalise the suborning of vulnerable adults and children for the purpose of encouraging them to join such sects and to give up their independence and what money they have for the benefit of the leaders of such groups, it is much to be encouraged. If my constituent, Laura Palmer, is right about the Picard law in France, I hope that the modern slavery Bill that we are about to introduce into this House will take account of that law and learn from it.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Given the excellent points that the hon. and learned Gentleman is making about trafficking, does he share my disappointment at the lack of any mention of female genital mutilation in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech?
Sir Edward Garnier
That matter was certainly mentioned in yesterday’s debate. Of course, female genital mutilation is a crime under our law. I share the hon. Gentleman’s disappointment at the lack of prosecutions so far, if that is what he is driving at, but I think he will understand that one difficulty that the prosecuting authorities and the police have had is in the gathering of evidence.
This is too obvious a point, but I will make it anyway: FGM does not take place in public. It is difficult for independent witnesses to come across evidence, although there will be children who are examined in hospital or seen by schoolteachers or general practitioners. Now that the subject is increasingly coming into the public arena, I am sure that such people will be on their guard to ensure that those who are already victims of FGM find at least some protection under the law, despite what has already happened to them, and that children who may be vulnerable to FGM are also protected. The hon. Gentleman’s point is not one of controversy—he and I generally agree that the more we can do to protect those young women, the better and more civilised our country will be.
It is a tradition in this House to have at least four or five criminal justice Bills every Session, most of which do exactly what previous Bills did in earlier Sessions and no doubt repeat what was done in earlier Parliaments. By and large that comes under the heading of too much legislation—often too much ill-thought-through legislation. The previous Labour Government passed something like 65 pieces of legislation on criminal justice. That was utterly wasteful of parliamentary time and most of it achieved very little. However, it makes Ministers feel good.
I think that the serious crime Bill will be better than that, although it concerns me—I say this gently—that there may be some rough edges to the proposed legislation. In parenthesis, I say to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) that as I understand it, the Bill will strengthen this country’s ability to protect vulnerable children and women and extend the reach of powers to tackle FGM, and it will also make it an offence to possess paedophile manuals. There is plenty of good stuff in the Bill, but I am concerned that in dealing with the protection of vulnerable children, the Government may adjust section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 in a way that will have unintended consequences. I urge the House, and the Government, to be sure before they amend the 1933 Act that that does not do something that they should not or do not intend.
At the risk of being excessively prissy and overly legalistic—a very rare thing for me—let me tell the House what the Act currently states. It is an offence if someone wilfully assaults, ill-treats, neglects, abandons, or exposes a child
“or causes or procures him to be assaulted, ill-treated, neglected, abandoned, or exposed, in a manner likely to cause him unnecessary suffering or injury to health (including injury to or loss of sight, or hearing, or limb, or organ of the body, and—”
I stress—
“any mental derangement),”.
As I understand it, the new Bill follows a campaign from 2012-13 that wishes to extend that part of the Act to cover emotional distress. That seems to me a difficult area to move into when the Bill is already being interpreted in a constructive and protective way.
Some of my constituents, particularly those who are strongly religious, have written to me because they are concerned that the teaching of particular religious tenets—not just Christian or Muslim—would or could stray into the area of emotional distress. I have no view on that because I am not aware of the factual basis on which such things might be established. However, we need to be careful when wishing to send out these messages and signals—I am afraid that such phrases are used by the Government in their surrounding material for this Bill and others—because we are in danger of passing legislation that amounts to just a collection of early-day motions, rather than producing coherent, well argued and well constructed law.
Earlier this week, Libby Purves, the Times journalist, wrote an interesting article—which I recommend—headlined, “You can’t always bring ugly sisters to trial”, towards the end of which she said,
“is it not potentially damaging to ‘intellectual development’ to bring up a child in a strict religious belief that daily contradicts the evolutionary science they learn at school? Is it not detrimental to ‘social development’ to raise a girl—or boy—in the firm expectation that she or he will only marry by parental arrangement?”
She continued:
“Think how many things you could potentially include. Suppose a family has a baby by donor insemination, or indeed another father, and never tells that child…Is it cruel and diminishing to deny someone knowledge of their origins? Come to that, the emotional damage wrought by divorce is well-attested and divorce is a deliberate act by at least one partner: criminal?”
I place these suggestions before the House to encourage us to be careful, as we move forward with enthusiasm in the last Session of this Parliament, about passing laws that are eye-catching. They must have some utility as well. This also applies to the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill. I cannot think of a more wonderful title for an Act of Parliament.
Geraint Davies
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman explain how he seems to support the Picard law, which is about mental manipulation, but does not support the idea of dealing with emotional stress? Those are related areas. Does he support any move to tighten up on advertising standards, which is a form of mental manipulation, in relation to Wonga, for example, or breakfast cereals that are described as low fat but which contain high levels of sugar, and so on? How does he square these things?
Sir Edward Garnier
The hon. Gentleman, perhaps unwittingly, illustrates my point. If we were to criminalise advertising sugar-filled cereals, we would be stepping down a path that I have no intention of going down. I do not know enough about the Picard law to comment intelligently about it, but I understand from my constituent, Laura Palmer, that it outlaws the manipulation of people under a mental incapacity, or who are temporarily mentally disturbed, to extract money from them—this goes back to my Moonies example. That is not the same as extending section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, under which it is already an offence to do terrible things to children, including causing them mental derangement.
The better answer to the question posed by the 2012 campaign—and to what I fear may be the consequence of the relevant part of the serious crime Bill—is to reflect emotional or intellectual damage in the sentencing under section 1 of the 1933 Act, not to create a whole new category of offence based on intellectual or emotional damage or impairment.
I am just placing the arguments before the House—I do not want to be nailed to the cross on this point—but I am always cautious about this House’s being too ready to pass spuriously attractive pieces of legislation for the purposes of sending out a message or giving a signal without thinking about the consequences of doing so. The purpose of the various stages of a Bill—Second Reading, Committee and Report stages, and then its going through the House of Lords, where it is examined again—is to deal with rough edges or unintended consequences. However, there is no harm in pointing them out now, so that the Government are aware of at least some people’s concerns.
To my mind, those concerns also apply to the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill. I am sure there is much good intention behind the Bill. The Government say:
“All too often people who are doing the right thing in our society feel constrained by the fear that they are the ones who will end up facing a lawsuit for negligence”
and that they want to
“change the law to reassure the public that they can participate in good causes or intervene in an emergency. In the unlikely event that something goes wrong and they are sued, the courts will take full and sympathetic account of the context of their actions.”
They also tell me that the proposed law is
“designed to bring some common sense back to Britain’s health and safety culture. We will put the law on the side of people who are doing the right thing and building better communities.”
That is all well and good, but if one descends into the potential detail of the legislation a number of concerns arise. They are illustrated by an article written by the Secretary of State for Justice headlined, “Our Bill to Curb the Elf and Safety Culture”. I am as great an admirer of the advocates of the saloon bar as anybody else, but I think we need to be a little careful when we are framing laws that affect the way in which our courts treat litigation between citizens.
My right hon. Friend is perfectly right that there have been a number of cases where people have felt constrained—for example, from taking children on school adventure trips and so on—for fear that they, or the school they are employed by, will be sued if somebody breaks their leg or falls into a river and comes to harm through no fault of the school or the individual supervisor, be they a schoolmaster or schoolmistress. As I understand the law of negligence, if it is just an accident, then by and large the courts will recognise that it is just an accident and liability will not be attached to the supervisor.
Andy McDonald
Is it not the case that all that is ever expected when people take children on a school trip is that they take reasonable care? They need to have some forethought as to the risks they run, but nobody is expecting a counsel of perfection. If an accident happens that could not have been foreseen, and there has been no carelessness or negligence, then no liability will ever attach.
Sir Edward Garnier
I agree. I hope that common sense already exists not only for those contemplating taking children away on trips. That is to say, we do not have to worry about this. If we set in place proper arrangements—we make sure there are lifejackets if people are going out in canoes and all that sort of stuff—then it strikes me that common sense is already in play.
What I am concerned about, however, is the concept of heroic negligence. I would be very interested to hear from a Minister from the Ministry of Justice the definition of heroic negligence. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr Pickles), is the embodiment of political heroism—that is easy to understand—but I think even he would be pushed to find a cogent definition of heroic negligence. When he goes to the next Cabinet meeting and discusses the important things they discuss in Cabinet, I wonder if he could encourage the Attorney-General and the Secretary of State for Justice to think carefully about the concept of heroic negligence, because it will lead to derision, if not amusement, if it is pushed forward.
I accept fully that this is not a courtroom and that the people who draft or think about legislation are not always thinking entirely legalistically. I plead guilty to occasionally being rather prissy about that, as I said a moment ago. However, I am a politician and in the Chamber there are other politicians, so we all understand the need for the political backdrop to the things we do. Governments will of course send out their messages and their signals. At some stage, however, somebody has to apply this law. At some stage, a judge in a county court or in the High Court is going to be faced with a case in which a fireman has been sued by someone he has rescued. He will not just personally be sued—the fire authority will also be sued.
One will have the most complicated litigation. Perhaps expert witnesses on heroism will be called, who will say, “Well, this was heroism that strayed into the area of negligence. It was foolhardy. On the other hand, this chap up the other ladder was heroic in a common-sense way.” One needs to go through these slightly absurd examples in order to demonstrate that somebody needs to think a little more carefully before this aspect of this very important Bill goes forward.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State be responding to this debate?
Sir Edward Garnier
I am very glad that my right hon. Friend will be responding because not only is he the embodiment of political heroism, he is the embodiment of political common sense. I know that because I have heard him say things that are eminent common sense. I dare say that in winding up the debate this afternoon he will do no more than utter eminent common sense, but with a delightful Conservative political tinge that I would be disappointed if he did not show.
I was elected to this House as a Conservative. I cannot wait for a single-party Conservative Government. I cannot wait for Robert Jenrick, the next Member of Parliament for Newark, to take his place in this House. Given that this debate continues until next Thursday, I hope he will be able to make his maiden speech during the Queen’s Speech debate, if he is fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr Speaker.
I am now getting into the area of waffle—[Hon. Members: “No!”] I finish on a serious point. This Queen’s Speech is full of good things and good intentions but I say with the greatest deference to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench that we need to be a little careful when we construct laws that do no more than send out a message. If I want to send out a message, I will use semaphore.
Mr Speaker
Order. Just before I call the next speaker, may I impress upon the House that although there is no formal time limit on speeches, a certain self-denying ordinance would help? I invite hon. Members to help each other in these matters. Although in terms of courtesy, legendary as it is, there is much to be said for Members seeking to imitate the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), there is no need for them to feel the need to do so as far as length of speech is concerned.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope that that was not directed personally. I am sure that it was not.
I want to concentrate on the supply of housing, or rather the lack of it, the regulation of the private rented sector and the impact of immigration on some of our poorer communities.
On housing supply, we ought to be building 250,000 homes a year to keep pace with household formation. We all know from the people who come to our surgeries weekly that we do not have homes that people can afford to buy, and that there are not homes in the social rented sector for which people are eligible—even, as in my constituency, for those who have been on the waiting list for 10 years. Many in the private rented sector are well housed but many others are not and they feel the pressure of rising rents.
We have a long-term failure in this country, as politicians, to build the homes that people need. I use those words carefully because it is a failure of the last Government as well as of this Government. It is just that the failure has got worse under this Government, as the number of homes being built has fallen.
Historically, compared with the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s the real fall-off has been in the building of homes to rent in the social rented sector.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
We could do with affordable homes in many of the villages and hamlets I represent. The problem is that whenever a site is identified, people come running to me to say, “We are all in favour of affordable homes, but this is the wrong place, Mr Parish”. That is where I think the problem lies—we need to persuade people that affordable homes are needed and must be situated somewhere. The problem is that everybody objects, wherever we want to build them.
Mr Betts
I entirely take the point that some people object. At a public meeting in my constituency three or four years ago, someone said to me, “We are not going to have homes for those sorts of people, are we?” Frankly, an elected representative has to stand up and face down that sort of prejudice, making it clear that everyone is entitled to a home. Many people who have lived in my constituency all their lives simply cannot afford to buy homes that their parents could have afforded to buy a few years ago. These people are entitled to live in that community; homes should be provided for them.
It is unfortunate that one of the biggest cuts in Government funding during this Parliament has been the 60% cut in funds for social housing. If we are to see house building rise in future, the private housing developers will play a part, but they are not going to build the quarter of a million homes we need. We are going to have to build more homes to rent. It is disappointing that the Government have not moved at least some way in that direction in the Queen’s Speech—failing, for example, to take the cap off local authority borrowing for house building, which they could have done. They could have provided 60,000 new homes immediately with no cost to central Government funds. They could have taken steps to alter the definition of the grant on housing association books and convert it into a genuine grant from the loan that it currently is. That would have freed up more borrowing for housing associations as well.
If we are honest about this in the long term—I say this to both Front-Bench teams—and if we are to build the homes that people need and build more social housing on the scale this country needs, we are going to have to put in more subsidy from the national public purse. That is the reality. We are not going to build the homes we need unless we spend more money on them. That is an uncomfortable fact and we tend not to want to discuss it before the general election, but it is, as I say, the reality of the situation. Whether it be housing associations or local authorities that do the building, they are going to need more assistance to make it work. We need to carry on arguing about that.
Michael Ellis
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me on the avenue provided by brownfield sites, which is seldom properly explored? Development companies are always very keen to develop on greenfield sites because it is much cheaper for them. Does he agree that more effort should be made to direct developers to brownfield sites as well?
Mr Betts
I very much agree with that. The Select Committee is currently doing an inquiry into the operation of the national planning policy framework. One problem can be seen in paragraph 47 and subsequent paragraphs, whereby the sites for the five-year housing supply in the local plan have to be viable and deliverable. Developers are now claiming that brownfield sites are not viable or deliverable in the current economic circumstances, forcing local authorities to revisit their local plans and include more greenfield sites. We need to look very carefully at that problem. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, to which we must give further consideration.
There is nothing wrong with people renting homes in the private rented sector, and many people are happy in the homes they rent. The real problem is the uncertainty over which home people will be living in in six months’ time, which also means uncertainty about which school their children will attend. It means uncertainty about whether they will have to live near their parents or grandparents to provide child care, or about whether to live on a suitable bus route for their job. Those are real problems—uncertainty and the instability it causes to family life. I therefore suggest that any measures to lengthen tenancies and provide more security should be welcomed.
I have made it clear on the record—the Select Committee report said it—that I am not in favour of rent control. If we try to interfere with the rent at the beginning of a tenancy negotiated between a landlord and tenant, we will damage the ability to attract private investment into better-quality private rented provision, which is something we must not do. If, however, we can find a way of making tenancies naturally and usually longer than the current six months to a year, we should go ahead with it. The proposals from the Opposition Front-Bench team are at least an interesting move in that direction, and I hope the Secretary of State will be prepared at least to consider them. I am sure he would like to see longer tenancies as well. I think we all want to provide greater certainty for families in the private rented sector.
We can do more to regulate letting agents. During the Select Committee’s inquiry, we heard more complaints about them and their activities than about any other issue. The Government have indicated that they want to make the whole process more transparent, so that people know what they will have to pay from day one rather than incurring hidden charges later. We ought to ban double charging: it is wrong that both landlord and tenant can be charged for the same service. Charging tenants has been banned in Scotland, and the Select Committee will be looking into that further. It has been argued that landlords will simply add their charge to the rent, but it might be slightly easier for a tenant to pay a little more rent each month than to find an average of £500 to pay the letting agent up front while at the same time having to find a deposit, which is often very difficult.
I wish the Government would reconsider their refusal to give local authorities more flexibility in the regulation of standards of private rented accommodation. The present licensing system is cumbersome, and operates only in areas of low demand or where there is antisocial behaviour. I am not entirely sure of the merits of a national registration scheme, but empowering authorities to adopt a mandatory registration scheme would provide the necessary degree of flexibility, and might make it possible to control the worst excesses of the worst landlords who will not join voluntary accreditation schemes. For several weeks, Sheffield city council encouraged landlords who were objecting to a licensing scheme in one area to apply for a voluntary accreditation scheme in the neighbouring area. During that time, only one came forward in Page Hall and Fir Vale in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett).
Some horror stories have emerged from the mandatory licensing scheme. A classic example is the story of a cooker that was not properly wired up, but was connected to ordinary sockets by a wire running right across the kitchen. In other instances, wiring has been left bare and dangerous. The council is now trying to deal with those problems, but the Inland Revenue would surely have a major interest in ensuring that landlords are registered so that it can know who is receiving rent from tenants. This is a complete scandal, and we need to put an end to it.
Let me now say something about the impact of immigration, a subject that arose frequently during the recent elections. By and large, people do not object to immigration. The problem is the Government’s “one size fits all” policy of a 100,000 limit, and the fact that they are shoving every kind of migrant into a single category. People in Sheffield do not object when doctors or computer technicians, of whom we have not enough in this country, come here to do vital jobs. Nor do they object to overseas students, who are clearly bringing real income and benefit to the city. Sheffield university is one of our biggest industries, involving a great many people, and there are also long-term benefits to be gained from allowing overseas students to study in this country.
The Government are right to take a firm view on the incomes that people should have when they sponsor those who wish to come here as dependants, and to say that those who come should be able to speak English. The real problem is caused by economic migrants, particularly those who come from the European Union. If we remain a member of the EU, as I hope we shall, we are likely to have to settle for the free movement of labour, even if we can mitigate the effects of that in the case of new entrant countries. However, people who come from the poorer parts of the EU are likely to enter poorer communities. If we, as a society, believe that immigration can provide benefits for the whole of our country, the whole of our country has a responsibility to help the individuals and communities on whom the entry of migrants will put particular pressure, for instance in relation to jobs and working conditions.
We know what happens in many cases. We believe that about 2,000 Slovak Roma are coming into Sheffield in Fir Vale and Page Hall and in Darwen and Tinsley, which are in my constituency. They are given a package: they are offered a deal whereby when they obtain jobs, which are mostly unskilled and low paid, those who give them the jobs take money from their pay packets and use it to pay the rents for the often grossly overcrowded housing they are given. That gets around the minimum wage legislation because the people do not see the whole of their wages, and they pay inflated rents because of the lack of proper regulation and rent contracts. That scam is going on, and we need to toughen up on regulation and enforcement.
I am pleased the Government are looking to introduce greater penalties for failure to pay the minimum wage. We ought to put more resources into that, and look at what local authorities can do to help enforce paying the minimum wage, and at the scams that link working conditions and working arrangements to housing arrangements. Local authorities will be very well placed, through the extra powers to enforce better housing conditions and their role in minimum wage enforcement, to bring those two things together and stop these scams, which undermine the working conditions and job opportunities of existing residents and cause a lot of grievance in the local community. We must recognise that this is a problem and tackle it. It is not racism to oppose such things; it is about people saying, “My job is being undercut; my conditions are being undercut; it simply isn’t fair.”
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and I have been to see the Secretary of State to discuss the pressure on local public services that is being generated, and he has promised us another meeting. I met local doctors in Darnall last week, because people are complaining that they cannot get an appointment to see their GP. The doctors tell me that the numbers of migrants coming into the local community are simply overwhelming them, and the money that comes for having patients arrives a long time after the patients arrive. They want to do thorough health checks on people who come from a background where they are not offered such checks, and that is absolutely right, but they also have people coming to them who do not speak English, so every consultation takes twice as long. People who have lived in that community for years then get upset and angry and irritated. They cannot get to see their GP, or have to wait in a queue while others take twice as long as them with the GP. We have to put resources in to help address that issue.
Resources must also go into the schools where kids are coming in who cannot speak English not just at five, but often at seven and eight. Some of them have not been to school at all, and not only their inability to speak English but sometimes their behaviour poses a great challenge to the school. I asked one head, “How many of these kids have you got?” and I was told, “Thirty. But not the same 30 as last month because they move around.” Having newly come to the country, they tend to be mobile; they have no fixed abode, and they may be somewhere else in a month’s time. That is a challenge to schools, to the police and to our housing services.
Therefore, if we believe as a country that there is benefit from migration, the communities facing those pressures need extra resources and assistance to cope. People say to me, “Mr Betts, is it fair that I have been waiting 15 years on the housing list, but someone can come to this country and in six months’ time get a house from the council?” Often, that does not happen, but the perception it could happen again builds up resentment. Councils could take action to give more priority to people who have been on the waiting list for a long time, because our communities will think that is fairer. That could be done, and the Government might think about that.
Finally—
Mr Speaker
Order. Before the hon. Gentleman gives way, I express the cautious optimism that he is approaching his very brief peroration.
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman and his colleague the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) came to see me and I was persuaded by what they had to say, and we are working on a package to be helpful. It has to go beyond money and be about services. I think the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying he is selling himself short, too, because what really impressed me from my meeting with him and his right hon. Friend was his determination to ensure the newcomers were properly integrated into the system, and the recognition that the failure to do that so far was making the situation worse. I commend him and his right hon. Friend, who sadly is not with us today, on the efforts they are putting in.
Mr Betts
That is absolutely right, and one of the positive things going on—it is not all negative by any means—is that the Pakistani Muslim centre had an open day for the Slovak Roma community a month ago in my constituency to which over 300 people came. That was a great event. Also, earlier today I got an e-mail from the Handsworth junior football club, which is going to give a week’s free coaching in August for the deprived community of Darnall, which has people from the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Somali and Slovak Roma communities. It is going to be open house for all to come along for a week’s free coaching. We can do these events on the ground, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough and I are very much involved in trying to stimulate such activity.
My final point does not relate to the Queen’s Speech, but it was interesting to hear the Conservatives’ major announcement last week of a commitment to radical fiscal devolution for Scotland. They have gone further than the other two parties in that regard, and I commend them for that. We shall not be doing much about that during this Session, however, and we ought to be thinking ahead to what will happen after the next Queen’s Speech. If Scotland votes to stay in the Union, as I very much hope it will, and if there is then extra devolution to Scotland and Wales, the really big question that we will all have to think about is the English question. Once such devolution has happened in Scotland and, to a great extent, in Wales, how will we be able to devolve English government in a way that will rejuvenate our local democracy and give our local authorities greater fiscal powers and responsibilities? That is the major question that we need to be thinking about.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
It will certainly be in my interest to keep my speech relatively short. I rise to speak in support of the Gracious Speech and, in particular, of the historic significance of the Modern Slavery Bill. I realise that it has only a tenuous connection to the themes we are debating today, but I want to talk about the housing of trafficked victims and I hope that the Ministers present will take that into account.
It is no coincidence that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) also chose to focus on this subject today. The Modern Slavery Bill is the proposal in the Queen’s Speech with the greatest historic significance. Who would have thought that we would need to pass further legislation to tackle slavery more than a century after all the efforts of William Wilberforce and his supporters? The brutal truth, however, is that the estimated number of slaves worldwide now stands at 21 million and that the slave trade generates £150 billion of illegal profits annually. That is three times more than was previously estimated. Those figures come from the International Labour Organisation. In this country, the trouble is that the slavery is largely hidden. It was no surprise that the Centre for Social Justice entitled its report on the subject “It Happens Here”, because it does. I hope that the publication of the Bill will raise awareness.
I could not speak on this subject without paying tribute to someone who has really raised awareness of modern-day slavery: the former Member of this House, Anthony Steen. In 2006, he began his work of shining a searchlight on this iniquitous trade in human beings. He has worked for the Human Trafficking Foundation and now plays a pivotal role in raising public awareness. The foundation includes among its trustees the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who was asked by the Home Secretary to chair the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. He did so with remarkable skill, garnering support from both sides of the House.
The Home Secretary is to be commended for tackling this wicked issue head-on. It is also significant that the whole House came together during the pre-legislative scrutiny stage in recognising that we need to tackle the matter on a cross-party basis. My right hon. Friend has clearly been motivated by the shortcomings in the existing law. A good Queen’s Speech should contain legislation that brings together, rationalises and simplifies existing laws that are dotted around in other Acts. This Bill will do that.
I was surrounded by erudite lawyers during the pre-legislative scrutiny stage, and I was struck by the fact that the prosecution rate was so poor because of misunderstandings surrounding the definition of slavery. Indeed, those misunderstandings extend as far as the European directive that covers the problem, which highlights trafficking. Those prosecutions often fail because victims of trafficking stand up in court and swear on oath that they came here of their own free will. Indeed, they are sometimes paid to come here, only to find themselves subject to servitude. When we try to prosecute on the ground of trafficking, the case therefore often fails because the witness says that they moved here of their own accord. In a funny sort of way, if the European directive had been drafted in English first, we would have spotted that problem: trafficking is not actually the overarching term that needs to be used. We need to refer to “exploitation”, of which trafficking is an aggravation. This Bill is an opportunity to get that balance right, and we are indebted to such people as Lady Butler-Sloss, who applied her razor-sharp mind to that pre-legislative scrutiny Committee and helped all of us to understand where these kinds of problems lie.
The Bill will break new ground because it will pay attention to the need for victim care and support. If it had neglected that aspect of this problem of modern-day slavery, I would be a good deal less enthusiastic about the Bill than I am. But I was delighted to hear that need to improve victim care and support spelled out in the Queen’s Speech. I do not underestimate the political challenges of protecting those who admit to breaking the law under coercion, but we will never stamp out this iniquitous trade in human beings until we get enough victims to testify. That is why I was encouraged to hear that a serious crime Bill will strengthen powers to seize the proceeds of crime as part of this Queen’s Speech. I firmly believe that some of those proceeds need to come back to the victims, which would help them to come forward to give evidence against the real criminals, who are the ones we need to catch. The care of victims of slavery in our country is nothing short of a scandal. I am sure there will not be a Member in this House who has not sat in a surgery hearing from someone—often someone young—who has been brought to this country under false pretences and still remains stateless within our society.
We also face real problems in trying to distinguish between those victims and the genuine criminals. I have heard evidence from victims who, just hours before being deported, were saved only by the swift intervention of lawyers, often working on a pro bono basis and some funded by the POPPY project, at detention centres. That happens all too often because of the inherent conflict of interest whereby UK Visas and Immigration, formerly the UK Border Agency, which is primarily responsible for getting immigration down, is the agency overseeing the decision about who stays and who goes. In some cases those almost deported faced a dangerous future, returning to families complicit in their trafficking in the first place. Anyone alleging slavery is invited to use the national referral mechanism, which contains questions designed to elucidate their real status. If they get through that, they are given just 45 days’ protection. That is my point about housing: what are these victims of trafficking expected to do about accommodation, after just 45 days of protection, while their whole situation remains uncertain? That is a cross-departmental consideration, so I hope the Ministers here today could give it some thought.
America is ahead of us, with statutory victim care and support. It has a designated independent anti-slavery ambassador, with a full-time complement of 80 staff, reporting directly to the President. The plan in this country is for a commissioner to be appointed by the Home Secretary, but an anti-slavery commissioner must be able to crack the whip round Whitehall, precisely because of the example I have just given about the lack of suitable housing for trafficked victims. We will not be the first country in Europe to have a commissioner; countries that have developed the role include Finland and the Netherlands. Of course I understand that the commissioner needs to have the sponsorship of one Department in order to secure adequate resources from the Treasury, but the commissioner must remain sufficiently independent to put a rocket up the prosecution service, as a Home Office Minister put it.
Children who are victims of slavery are a particularly important concern to us. The Government have recognised that with pilots for children’s advocates. A young person does need someone to fight their corner with authorities and stay on their case. A particularly worrying aspect of child slavery in this country is the fact that sadly children are often send to the UK to serve family members as slaves, even for sex. One victim told us that even when she was allowed to go to church on Sundays, she was forbidden to speak to other people. That shows how we need to open our minds and our eyes to the hidden slaves around us. We should try asking the chamber maid, the cleaner and those we fear might be under duress and offer a friendly hand of help where we can.
Jeremy Corbyn
The right hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. She must be aware of the problem of children living in informal foster care with distant relatives in this country, which means that nothing is done to regularise their immigration status and they are threatened with removal at age 18, having been completely unaware that they had no status whatsoever. The Home Office needs a different approach to the matter.
Mrs Spelman
The hon. Gentleman raises an important anomaly, and it certainly ought to be debated in relation to the Bill.
I have two more points to make. The first is about the Gangmasters Licensing Authority’s transition from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—it was under my wing when I was Secretary of State— to the Home Office. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority does an excellent job in the sectors of the economy that it currently covers—agriculture, fisheries and horticulture—but sadly, slavery is rife in many other sectors, such as catering, cleaning and hospitality. I urge all Government Departments to make use of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority model to tackle slavery in the economic sectors for which they have responsibility.
Finally, I believe that the Bill must contain a clause on supply chains. That would make the legislation world-class. Businesses in general need to reappraise the risk of slavery in their own supply chains. That has already been achieved in America, where the Transparency in Supply Chains Act has been passed in California. Any European company that wants to do business in California must be compliant. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) introduced a private Member’s Bill on the subject, which I am sure he would wish me to remind the House of. We need a clause in the Bill that tackles the problem. Until businesses are made to report on due diligence, ruling out slavery the length of their supply chains, they will continue to be at significant reputational risk and, sadly, the victims will continue to suffer.
The UK has the potential to provide global leadership on this important issue. Frankly, with our heritage and the Wilberforce spirit behind us, we ought to be able to do that, and this Queen’s Speech opens the way.
Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I start by offering my sincere apologies to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to right hon. and hon. Members for not being present at the start of the debate; I was chairing a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, which was attempting to hold the Government to account over their major projects.
I wanted the opportunity to speak in this debate because this is the final Queen’s Speech of this Parliament. I looked at it to see what it offered my constituents, the good people of Barking and Dagenham, but I am afraid that it offers them nothing. The recent European and local elections placed centre stage the challenges that many communities face from migration. In Barking and Dagenham, we have been dealing with the impact of migration on our community for over a decade. Indeed, the extreme right, in the form of the British National party, tried to exploit the legitimate concerns and fears that people have when dealing with change. Although we saw off that divisive, racist and intolerant threat, the concerns remain, and there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to help me or my constituents to respond to them.
The Government’s rhetoric continues to be about being tough on immigration numbers, but inevitably the Government fail to deliver on that promise. When the Government fail, that strengthens and deepens people’s loss of trust in their politicians, democracy is damaged and community cohesion is undermined.
More migration across national borders is a feature of the inter-dependent world of the 21st century; nobody can turn the clock back on that. The Government should start tackling the issues on which they can make a difference and respond positively to people’s concerns as well as articulate much more positive messages about the benefits of migration to our economy, culture and communities. If they were to do the practical things, anger would not be turned on migrants or indeed on second and third generation British citizens who are scapegoated for our Government’s failures.
My constituents feel bewildered and frustrated by the Government’s failure to respond to their needs. Top of their agenda is housing. They are desperate for a decent home at a price they can afford. Our need for more homes in Barking and Dagenham has gone beyond a crisis. Our population is set to grow by around 50,000 over the next decade. We have more than 13,000 families on the housing waiting list, and homelessness has increased by a staggering 167% since 2010 when this Government came into office.
In London as a whole, more than half a million new homes are needed by 2021 to meet the projected increase of a million in the city’s population, according to the figures that are produced by the London councils. If we factor in existing need, the number of houses needed in the capital over the next seven years grows to more than 800,000. What is the Government’s pathetic response to this crisis? It is a help-to-buy scheme that most economists believe is fuelling the housing price bubble and is anyway having minimal impact in helping first-time buyers or people in housing need in London.
Proposals in the Queen’s Speech simply tinker at the edges and fail either to unlock the potential or to provide the resources needed to respond to my constituents’ need for decent, affordable homes. The Government’s failure to act where they can simply fuels hostility against migrants and breeds division rather than supporting cohesion and harmony. There has been too much talk and too little action on housing. The Government need to stop making grand claims about how many homes they are going to build and get on with unlocking the investment to make things happen on the ground. Critical to that is getting the essential transport infrastructure in place. All I can see, and all my constituents can see, are a series of what I call big boys’ toys, such as HS2, for which the case is not yet proven, and Boris Johnson’s vanity cable car project.
We need a proper strategy that links up housing, transport and other regeneration so that we can achieve the potential and the prosperity for Barking and Dagenham and the east of London that are taken for granted in the wealthier parts of the capital.
Let me take Barking Riverside as an example. This is one of the biggest regeneration sites in London. It has been more than 20 years since the site was first bought by Bellway. There have been endless master plans, but since 2008 there has been planning permission for nearly 11,000 homes to be constructed on the site. About a third are supposed to be homes with three or more bedrooms, and more than 4,000 are supposed to be affordable. That means that 26,000 people could be housed on Barking Riverside—half the number of extra people we expect to be living in the borough over the next eight to 10 years. Yet so far, only 360 homes have been completed and another 300 are under construction. At that rate it will take more than 100 years to complete the development.
Failure by both the Government and the Mayor to take the necessary steps to speed up this development is a blatant dereliction of duty. Putting the necessary transport infrastructure in place is part of the planning deal to build these new homes, yet when Boris Johnson first became Mayor in 2008, he stopped the proposals to extend the docklands light railway to Barking Riverside on the grounds of cost. Only in 2013 did he start lobbying Government for the funding of a cheaper proposal—to extend the Gospel Oak to Barking line to Barking Riverside. However, in the last Budget all we got was a plan for a plan, with woolly words and no concrete commitments. The Government said that they would
“work with the Mayor of London to develop proposals”.
No funding has been made available.
The Government are prepared to commit £50 billion to HS2, but cannot commit even the £180 million needed to extend the Gospel Oak to Barking line to Barking Riverside. Boris spends £60 million on his cable car—a facility which, according to a recent freedom of information request, is used by just four regular commuters. Neither the Chancellor nor the Mayor has committed the money needed to unlock the huge potential for housing and regeneration in the heart of my constituency.
The Queen’s Speech could have delivered for Barking and Dagenham, and for London. We have the land to build a significant proportion of the homes we need. Indeed, there are 4,000 hectares of brownfield land in London alone, about 40% of which is owned by the public sector. Lack of planning permission is not an excuse. In my borough, we already have planning consents for at least 20,000 new homes, yet over the past 10 years, the housebuilding average has been around 500 homes a year. This is about political will. The Government should use their infrastructure programme to unlock the potential of communities, rather than feed the vanity of the coterie of men who control the legislative and financial purse strings.
The Government should legislate to ensure a ruthless and determined use of compulsory purchase powers so that disused sites can be brought into use and new homes built. They should legislate to penalise both public and private bodies which simply sit on land to let its value grow, rather than building homes.
The Government should lift restrictions on London councils to enable them to borrow against their assets to build new homes. Far from weakening section 106 powers, the Government should strengthen them to ensure that a good proportion of new homes are affordable to local families. That would be a legislative programme that brings optimism and hope to the good burghers of Barking and Dagenham, and across east London. That would be a pragmatic and serious response to the concerns expressed by voters in the recent elections. That is what the Queen’s Speech should have contained and that is what my constituency, London and Great Britain need.
Sir John Randall (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). Tempted as I am to agree with her about HS2 and the island airport, I think I should move on swiftly.
Both my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have mentioned the D-day anniversaries—it was also mentioned in the Gracious Speech—and it is right that we should all pay tribute to those who were involved. However, I should also like to mention other events. I have not done my research, but I think that it was in this very House in 1944 that a Member referred to those people fighting in Italy as the D-day dodgers. Seventy years ago, on his 21st birthday, my father was at the battle of Monte Cassino. Recently, there was a royal visit to Monte Cassino to mark the anniversary of the battle. While we concentrate on D-day, it is also important that we do not forget all those who fought elsewhere.
The right hon. Member for Barking was right to say that we need to look at housing, and I believe that we are making efforts in that regard. The other area of concern is that of immigration. There are genuine concerns about that issue, but I want to sound a cautionary note. A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged to have been asked to attend the 105th birthday celebrations of Sir Nick Winton. I am sure that many people in the House have heard of him, but if they have not, he founded the Abbeyfield homes system. In 1988, his wife came across a scrapbook in the attic of his house in Maidenhead and discovered that Nick Winton, as a young man in Prague at the outbreak of the second world war, had helped to get Jewish children out of Czechoslovakia into Britain. In fact, one of the people he rescued was a Member of this House and is now in the other place, Lord Alfred Dubs. I have discovered that, at that time, it was only Britain that was really prepared to help such children. Those who wanted to help had to have £50 and be able to find an address for the children to go to. What struck me was that the parents must have gone through hell being parted from their children, but they gave them up so that they could go off to find a life—literally, to find a life. Unaccompanied children arrive as asylum seekers at Heathrow, which is in my borough, next to my constituency. This is an issue that stirs us up. We have to remember that people are coming here not because they love the climate; they are coming because they are escaping from tyranny elsewhere, and we should always remember that.
There are some measures in the Queen’s Speech about which I have concerns. First, I am a director of the family retail business—furnishing, which is why I am keen on housing being improved, as long as everyone does not shop online—and I want to see some detail on the carrier bag measure. Although it is generally welcome, it is easy to talk about something happening, but the practicalities of it and how individual customers and retailers will be affected will have to be looked at carefully. It is good to have noble ideas but sometimes the practicalities have to be worked out.
Nia Griffith
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that the programme of paying for carrier bags has been a tremendous success in Wales? It has been remarkable how little correspondence any of us have had against the programme and, today, the Association of Convenience Stores has come out in favour of the measure.
Sir John Randall
I recognise that, and I have been following the issue for some time. In fact, the measure would save me money because I would have to give out fewer carrier bags. However, we might also be put in an awkward position. My family’s store is not a convenience store and we sometimes sell quite high-value items. If someone has bought something for £200 and we then say, “It is 5p for a carrier bag”, that puts the retailer in a difficult position. I recognise what the hon. Lady says, but we do have to think about such a measure. I am an advocate of it, however, because it is environmentally desirable.
Fracking is a more controversial issue and we need some detailed thought on it. I heard what the Opposition spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), said. There is uncertainty on both sides of the argument. I agree that fracking is not the only answer to our energy problems, but some of the stories put out to frighten people about someone turning up outside the back door with a rig ready to drill through their garden are false. We have to get the legislation right. Strong environmental concerns about water and all sorts of other issues have to be looked at carefully. I do not want us to rush into this because it is a fundamental issue. I hope that we can look at fracking in as non-partisan a way as possible because it is important for the future of our country.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), the one thing in the Queen’s Speech that I am most delighted about is the introduction of a modern-day slavery Bill. Like her, I pay tribute to Anthony Steen of the Human Trafficking Foundation—I declare an interest as a trustee of that organisation—and to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), with whom I have been privileged to sit both on the review that the Home Secretary asked him to carry out and on the scrutiny Committee for the draft Bill. For the past six months, since deciding to no longer keep an eye on my colleagues to ensure that they vote in the right way, I have devoted myself to that cause. As with so many things, modern-day slavery is something that people cannot ignore once they find out about it.
Anyone who has watched and been appalled by “12 Years a Slave” must realise that almost the same sort of conditions exist for some people today—being kidnapped, having no escape or being too frightened to find any way out. If nothing else were to be done in this Session, we could still be a world leader with this Bill. It is the most important measure. There are things that the scrutiny Committee has advocated that were not in the draft Bill, and I look forward to seeing whether they will be incorporated—no doubt some will and some will not. I will reiterate a few of those recommendations.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden mentioned the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and things that we could be doing. We want not only increased penalties, but to ensure that the activity is simply not lucrative. As with a lot of crime, but particularly modern-day slavery, one of the problems is that by the time of conviction the criminals have moved all their ill-gotten gains around the world. In Italy, where the authorities have experience with the mafia, they now freeze assets on arrest. I hope that we can go some way down that line. It does not mean confiscation; it is simply freezing. People are allowed something to exist on, because they remain innocent until proven guilty, but we have to look at such a measure in order to stop the goods and money being taken away. Otherwise, for some of these people, five years in jail is nothing, as long as they have the billions when they come out. During debate on the Children and Families Bill, some Members in the other place were advocating guardians for trafficked children. Such a measure has to be included for child victims of modern-day slavery—I think the Government will do so, because they said that they would.
The Minister without Portfolio (Mr John Hayes)
I thank my right hon. Friend and the other members of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee for their work. Does he acknowledge that the role of the new anti-slavery commissioner will very much be to co-ordinate the law-enforcement process, including internationally, where international co-operation plays the part that he describes? Clearly, in consideration of the Bill, the role of the commissioner can be looked at in some detail in that regard.
Sir John Randall
I agree with my right hon. Friend. I am a little cautious, for understandable governmental reasons, about ensuring the independence of the commissioner. No one likes to give up power entirely. The commissioner’s role will be important, but we have to recognise that to a great extent, the commissioner will have to have independence from Departments. That is another aspect.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden talked about the supply chain and ensuring that businesses have due regard. I am sure that that theme will be raised on Tuesday when we are discussing home affairs and certainly when we debate the Bill itself. It is one of the most controversial issues, but it is essential. How far that is put into legislation will have to be discussed. I know that the Government, rightly, do not want to burden businesses with unnecessary regulation, but I think that most businesses, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden said, will want such provision for their own reputational advantage, so that they are seen not merely to pay lip service to having no slavery in their supply chain but to ensure that they do not. Nobody can be sure at any particular stage and some of the evidence we heard over recent months has put me off purchasing all sorts of items. For example, many of the prawns we get in this country, from Thailand and elsewhere, are produced in conditions, which, if we knew more about them, would make us very wary of buying them.
Huw Irranca-Davies
The right hon. Gentleman is making a very good point. Does he agree that buyers in the UK can play a significant role unilaterally in this regard? There are half a dozen significant buyers in the garment and food sectors and should they choose to lead the field by saying that they will ensure that they are paying people what they need right down the supply chain, whatever part of the world they live in, so that they can live in dignity and bring up their families, that could go a long way.
Sir John Randall
To a great extent, they are doing that. The problem is that when their suppliers in another country tell them that everything is okay and not to worry, they accept that. It is sometimes very difficult to get right down to the problem and that is why many of us think that one director or the chief executive should have a legal responsibility, not to penalise that person but to help the company. In other words, so long as they are doing their very best they will not be hauled in front of everybody and publicly shamed if something is found to have gone wrong. The idea is to help businesses.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend also acknowledge the excellent work that has been done through the Department for International Development’s support in places such as Bangladesh, where the garment industry has been encouraged to improve its terms of work and the conditions for its staff? UK companies that take supplies from Bangladesh are being encouraged to work with DFID on that.
Sir John Randall
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in this field. He is a very strong advocate and he is absolutely right. We have to work on this and must also increase public awareness. There is always a problem—I remember discussing it as a furnisher in the context of sustainable timber—in that some people, sad to say, do not care as long as a product is cheap enough. That is true of a lot of items. We must make it unacceptable to have available products produced by slave labour so that people will be unable to say, “Well, it’s cheap.” There should be no choice. We in this country should be free of the problem and we should set an example.
There are always things that I would have liked to have seen in the Queen’s Speech and things that I am delighted to see. If we can get a modern slavery Bill of which we can be genuinely proud onto the statute books in the 10 or 11 months left to us at the end of this Parliament, we will all be able to say that we were here when that happened.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), who made some good points, particularly about the modern slavery Bill, and some effective comments about immigration and what happens to youngsters coming into the country. I think that that is something on which we could all agree.
I am pleased to make a small contribution to the debate and, perhaps unsurprisingly, would like principally to address some issues about energy. I am somewhat perplexed by the apparent headlong rush to do everything possible to allow fracking to take place. I remain sceptical about the potential of fracking and would be more cautious about taking it forward, because despite all the claims that are made of a new energy revolution, the situation in the UK is vastly different from that in the United States, and even there considerable controversy surrounds the technology.
Much of central and eastern Scotland, including parts of my constituency, is included in the latest map of possible sites for unconventional oil and gas. It seems to me, however, that we need to take a balanced, responsible and evidence-based approach, listening to the concerns of communities, and to proceed with caution. I particularly wanted to raise this issue, because I am a little unclear as to what is proposed in the infrastructure Bill. In Scotland, the situation is different from that in England. Although onshore oil and gas is vested in the Crown and subject to the same licensing regime at present as the remainder of the UK, planning law is devolved and the law of property is also significantly different, and both are the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament.
The changes to the law to allow fracking under properties without owners’ permission has already produced a considerable public response. In fact, I received a number of e-mails on the subject overnight. Although I accept what the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said about the amount of misinformation and misapprehension over what is meant by those changes, I had assumed that the proposed changes to the law would not affect Scotland, since property and land law is a devolved matter. However, the notes to the Queen’s Speech issued by the No. 10 press office state, in relation to the infrastructure Bill:
“Subject to consultation, this Bill would support development of gas and oil from shale and geothermal energy by clarifying and streamlining the underground access regime.”
Furthermore, in a section headed “Devolution” it goes on to say:
“The provisions relating to roads, Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects, planning consents for local projects and public sector land assets would apply only to England. The provisions relating to the local land charge aspects of the Land Registry and invasive non-native species would apply to England and Wales. Where the Bill deals with devolved matters, we are engaging with the Devolved Administrations as needed.”
Now, that raises a question in my mind: what is the situation with
“streamlining the underground access regime”,
as the notes put it? Can the Minister clarify whether it is the Government’s intention to seek changes in Scotland on these issues or is it indeed a specific matter for England? I had understood that the problem was with the specific English law of trespass, a law that is different in Scotland. If the Government’s intention is the former, what specific changes are they seeking? Many questions are being asked by my constituents and I do not want to give them false information, so I need to be clear about exactly what is happening and how far it will affect them.
The notes also refers to the future of North sea oil and gas and the report from Sir Ian Wood on maximising economic recovery of oil and gas reserves. This report perhaps already holds a special place in history as the only review to which both the UK Government and the Scottish Government, and almost everyone in between, has subscribed, even though it has some fairly uncomfortable things to say to both Government and industry. We will, of course, look closely at the part of the Bill that seeks to implement the proposals, although we have a different view of the future—these matters will become academic for this place following September’s referendum.
It will, however, be interesting to see how the Government propose to proceed. They say that they will
“introduce a levy-making power so that the costs of funding a larger, better resourced regulator can be paid for by industry rather than by the taxpayer as is currently the case.”
I support that objective, but as other parties now seem to be falling over themselves to offer some crumbs of further devolution to fight off the growing momentum towards a yes vote, it will be interesting to see whether that includes basing the proposed new regulator in Aberdeen, the oil capital of Europe, or whether it will be yet another London-based outfit.
What the Gracious Speech did not do was tackle some of the many issues affecting the energy industry and consumers in Scotland and throughout other parts of the United Kingdom. Over the years in this House, I have repeatedly raised the issue of the unfair transmission charging regime that increases costs for generators, particularly renewable generators, in Scotland, adding to the costs of producing energy, which are invariably passed on to the consumers. After much pressing, Ofgem finally came up with Project TransmiT, which seems to be interminable. Although far from perfect, the proposal was to make some changes to the regime that would have benefited renewable generation, particularly in Scotland, yet its implementation has been postponed yet again and is now promised for sometime next spring.
The project has been postponed several times, and energy producers and consumers continue to pay more. Dealing with such issues could do a lot to help ameliorate the costs that consumers must pay towards their energy. If this Government are truly intent on enhancing the United Kingdom’s energy independence and security, as stated in the Gracious Speech, they need to get a grip and ensure that we have a regime that truly encourages the growth of renewable energy, which will not only create jobs but, as I said, ensure lower prices to consumers in the longer term.
There are many other issues that impact upon energy consumers and the cost of living of specific groups which could be dealt with to give real benefit and relief, but yet again they are completely missing from the Gracious Speech. It is interesting to note in passing that much was said earlier by the Secretary of State about companies voluntarily freezing prices. That has undoubtedly happened in some cases, but as those of us who looked at price freezes in another context know, it comes at a cost. There is no magic bullet. Along with its proposal to freeze prices, Scottish and Southern Energy announced significant job losses and pulled out of several investment projects. That must be borne in mind when thinking about such a proposal. It is not a one-way street.
I have long championed the cause of introducing a simple measure that would help pensioners who live off the gas grid, and have introduced two Bills on the matter, as well as raising it during the passage of various energy Bills. I may well take part in the ballot for private Members’ Bills and, if successful, introduce such a Bill again. The simple fact is that those who are off the gas grid pay higher costs than those on the grid, and pensioners are particularly badly hit. The problem in many rural areas is exacerbated by the fact that much of the housing is old and of construction that makes it very difficult to install energy-saving methods, such as cavity wall insulation.
Of course, those households will continue to receive the same winter fuel allowances as pensioners on the gas grid, but the crucial difference is how the energy is delivered. Those who are on the gas grid will receive their winter fuel bill around the time that the winter fuel allowance is generally paid, and the system therefore works very well for them. Indeed, in their explanatory notes to the regulations that last amended the benefit, the previous Government said specifically:
“They are paid in a lump sum each winter to ensure that money is available when fuel bills arrive.”
That is not the case for those who are off the gas grid. They face the difficulty that they have to pay for their liquefied petroleum gas or home fuel oil up front at the beginning of winter, well before they have the benefit of the winter fuel allowance. Many find it difficult to do so and may well not fill up the tank completely, leaving them having to do so in the depths of winter, which brings problems of its own.
When the Office of Fair Trading looked at the market a few years back, it found that there were many competing suppliers in the market. By definition, many of these were small suppliers, and although some of the larger players will offer greater flexibility for payment, many smaller ones are unable to so. The price of fuel is rising, often quite substantially as winter approaches, and even those suppliers who offer a fixed winter price will do so at a price higher than the summer price. There is also the problem of getting a delivery. Members will recall the dreadful weather two winters ago, during which many of my constituents faced huge difficulties in getting their tanks filled up, some being left with no fuel in the run-up to Christmas. That was perhaps exceptional, but it shows the additional problems that off-grid consumers face.
I am very pleased that the Labour Opposition have now supported the measure. I welcomed it when they did so and I welcome it again today, but the cynic in me notes in passing that I have now had support from all three of the other parties in the House for the measure. Unfortunately, it has always been when they were in opposition, not when they were in government. I hope that in the event of a change of Government, this time we will see an all-party approach to try to get the matter dealt with finally. It is an issue that has been going on for years and it is a simple matter that could make a real difference.
As I said, my Bill put forward a suggestion as to how we might tackle the problem, as was mentioned earlier by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), by paying the winter fuel allowance earlier. The regulations could be amended simply by changing the date on which it is paid to off-grid customers. The scale of the problem was highlighted this week by a report from Scotland’s Rural College which showed that nearly 60% of the over-60s in rural areas are in fuel poverty, compared with 45% in urban areas. That is a truly shocking statistic. We need urgent action to tackle this situation.
The other point that I have often raised and will raise again is that there are no proposals in the Gracious Speech to tackle the problems of off-grid consumers under the present green deal. That is not working as well as it should, partly because it is left to the energy companies to set up and administer. There is such a complete lack of trust among consumers towards energy companies that many will not take up any deal offered by them. One example that I raised earlier and will mention again relates to the lack of ability to get a home fuel or LPG boiler under the energy company obligation scheme.
In Scotland the situation is slightly different. Under the home energy efficiency programme, the old scheme partly for central heating that was introduced by the Scottish Parliament, it is possible to get an off-grid boiler if it is replacing part of the central heating scheme. As I understand it, this is not available in other parts of the United Kingdom and it is not available under the energy companies’ ECO scheme. We have repeatedly been told that ECO is technology-neutral but this is clearly not the case, as none of the companies will include off-grid boilers in their schemes. I appreciate that these boilers are more expensive than traditional boilers, but that rather emphasises the point that those who are off the gas grid are doubly penalised—they pay much higher prices and at the same time cannot get replacement equipment that would be more efficient. Surely there are economies of scale that could reduce prices if the companies offered such technology, but I suspect that it will take the Government to force them to do so.
I am disappointed that despite talking about this matter—I know that the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) took an interest in it when he was an Energy Minister—the Government have not grasped the nettle and included provisions to deal with these issues. There is a missed opportunity in many of the proposals relating to energy, which could have made a real difference to people’s lives.
Mr Hayes
As the hon. Gentleman cited the impressive record that I had as the Energy Minister, will he acknowledge—I know he is very generous about these things—that we have made strides in greater transparency and clarity, at least in terms of tariffs, and that that progress was partly inspired by contributions from Members across the House, including him?
Mr Weir
I have always acknowledged that even off grid the Minister was responsible for setting up the ministerial round table which has opened up discussion on these issues. I acknowledge that, but what we need is action before next winter on these specific issues, because there are serious problems among pensioners in rural areas, and not just in Scotland. In the highlands of Scotland it is a particular issue, but it is also an issue in rural Wales, Northern Ireland and many parts of rural England. We need action on that. It is not expensive. It could be done relatively easily and I am disappointed that the issue has not been tackled.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate following Her Majesty’s most Gracious Speech yesterday—a speech which truly shows that we are on the side of the vast majority of hard-working, decent, law-abiding, responsible people. It is a speech which, despite what the Opposition say, continues to demonstrate that this Government are dedicated to securing our country’s long-term economic future.
The range and depth of Bills announced shows that there is no let-up in our commitment to put right the failures of the previous Government, and builds on what this Government have already achieved. For the Opposition to have any credibility, they need to accept the failures of the past and just say sorry. Until they do, no one should ever trust them again with the finances of this country. Their weak attempt to frame this parliamentary Session as lacking substance is misguided and shows the desperation of their own argument. As John Longworth, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said:
“Businesses across Britain will be relieved to see that the government has opted for a streamlined legislative programme, meaning ministers can devote more time to delivering the best possible environment for economic growth and enterprise. Businesses hold governments accountable not for how many bills they pass, but for what they actually deliver.”
I agree. There is much to be welcomed, and it is not about quantity but quality. It is also not just about what we say here and what is in the speech but what we do and achieve in the next 11 months.
We have already achieved a lot. When this Government came to power, the future of our country was by no means certain. We were in the throes of Labour’s great recession, borrowing billions of pounds to bridge the gap between income and expenditure; confidence was at an all-time low; and, to top it all, we were informed by the former Chief Secretary, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), through his now infamous note, that “there’s no money left”. It was against this backdrop—this toxic economic inheritance—that the new Government had to set about rebuilding and rebalancing our economy. We abandoned the plans of the previous Government for more borrowing, more spending and more tax in exchange for a real long-term economic plan that is delivering growth, employment, and a brighter future than we might have dared to expect. Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech builds on that.
Huw Irranca-Davies
In his very outspoken welcoming of the Queen’s Speech, will the hon. Gentleman reflect on a situation that I am sure affects his constituents as well as mine, whereby as many as one in six agency workers now work under the so-called Swedish derogation, which means that some of them are being paid £135 less for doing the same job as the people standing next to them? Is that how we should be rebuilding the economy?
Stephen Metcalfe
The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. There are still challenges to be tackled. I am not saying that the recovery is perfect. There is a long way to go and we need to do a lot more, but the fact that we are on the right road has to be welcomed.
There are challenges—there is no doubt about that—and one of them is the overall cost of living, but we are serious about tackling that by taking the decisions to resolve these issues, decisions that have been blocked at every turn by Labour. I accept that there is a cost of living challenge—we have to; it is a reality—but we were always going to have this problem until our long-term economic plan was in place and seen to be working. Whichever way you cut it, as a nation we were spending more than we were earning and borrowing the difference, and that is what had to come to a stop. We cannot keep spending more than we earn. Anyone who has ever got into trouble with their credit card or overdraft knows that at some point they have to stop spending and face reality. That is what we did when we got into government—we faced reality and we stopped spending so much. Anyone who has ever used a credit card or an overdraft to fund their lifestyle knows that when they rein in expenditure and start paying back their bills they do not have as much money to spend. That is the situation we found ourselves in as a nation. Despite the toxic economic inheritance we received, we have managed the reductions in spending in a cautious and measured way. It has not been without pain, but if we had not taken the decisions we have, things could have been so much worse than they have been and are.
How do we tackle the continuing cost of living challenge? I believe there are three ways to do that. First, we can put off the inevitable, keep borrowing and spending, and hope something will turn up. Secondly, we can take an interventionist approach and try to con people that we can freeze energy prices, cap rents, and renationalise the railways. Thirdly, we can do what this Government have done: take the hard decisions, pull our head out of the sand, and tackle the problem head on. The best way to deal with the challenge is to create growth and jobs and to rebalance the economy so that wages rise at least in line with costs, and, in the meantime, to mitigate the impact of the readjustment as best we can. For example, we have raised the threshold at which people begin to pay tax so that low-paid workers who are least able to weather the economic storm can keep more of their money. That measure alone has saved 26 million people £705 each per year.
We have demonstrated to the markets that we are serious about paying down the debts and closing the deficit. This has potentially saved mortgage holders over £1,000 for every percentage point by which mortgages could have risen. We have frozen council tax so that after five years people are paying the same as they were in 2010, saving them hundreds of pounds. We should compare that with the doubling of council tax that took place under the previous Government. We have frozen the fuel duty escalator, making fuel now 20p per litre cheaper than it would have been under the previous Government’s plans. We have created jobs so that people have the security of an income. We have created 1.5 million new jobs and now have more people in work than ever before in our history. I could go on .
However, all of the above does not mean I am oblivious to the challenges people continue to face each and every day. That is why I warmly welcome all the Bills announced in the Gracious Speech, including the Childcare Payments Bill, which will help people to meet the cost of child care; the infrastructure Bill, which will enable us to source cheaper local energy; and the pensions Bill, which will show that we trust people to do the right thing with the money they have saved.
Above all, I welcome the small business, enterprise and employment Bill. As many in this House will know, in my previous life I worked in my own family printing business. I can therefore confirm that running your own small business is tough—always has been and probably always will be. If we can do anything to make it easier, then we must, and this Bill goes a long way towards achieving that. People might ask what small businesses have to do directly with the cost of living. I sometimes think we forget how important our small and medium-sized business sector is. It is the powerhouse of the British economy and—dare I say it?—the backbone of our society. Not until the SME sector is truly thriving will we be able fully to tackle the cost of living challenge. There are 4.9 million small businesses in the UK. If even only half of them employed one extra person, we could wipe out unemployment in a stroke.
That is why this Bill is so important, and I am not the only one who thinks so—the Federation of Small Business and the British Chambers of Commerce have also welcomed it. John Allan, the FSB’s national chairman, said:
“The Small Business Bill, announced today in the Queen’s Speech, reflects the growing recognition of the role small businesses have to play in driving forward the economy and the need to do all we can to support them in that effort.”
John Longworth, director general of the BCC, said:
“Simplifying life for small or growing businesses should be an objective shared across all political parties.”
That is what I believe we are delivering. A number of significant measures in the Bill will go a long way towards helping small businesses and thus helping them to support their staff in tackling the rising cost of living. Unlike Governments or public bodies, SMEs can pay their staff only what the company earns, and until they can earn more they cannot pay more.
The first measure that will have a significant impact on the success of our businesses is the renewed focus on late payment. As I said in my debate on this topic 18 months ago, small businesses should not be acting as the bank for large business. A recent survey of FSB members found that 51% of large company invoices were paid late. That is outrageous. It is blocking tens of billions of pounds that could be pumped back into the economy for the benefit of the majority and not the minority. Make no mistake: this is not asking companies to settle their invoices before the due date; it is just asking them to settle them at the agreed terms, whether 30, 60 or 90 days—that is a private arrangement. Paying on time could significantly increase the profits of small businesses. Businesses often function on overdrafts because of the money they are owed. If they did not have to fund an overdraft, they would undoubtedly have more money for wages and investment. Late payment of invoices costs money, affects cash flow, increases overdrafts, causes anxiety, and demotivates businesses so that they do not invest. Anything we can do to improve the situation by toughening up the prompt payment code is very welcome, but if it does not work, please expect me to come back here and call for yet further action. We cannot take our foot off the accelerator on this one.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend disappointed, as I am, that the Queen’s Speech did not say anything about a full review of business rates? I am sure that he has been very conscious of this issue and businesses in my constituency talk about it all the time. We fundamentally need a full review of business rates in order to come up with a fairer tax.
Stephen Metcalfe
I agree that we need to look at that. The steps we have taken to ease rates for small businesses have been welcomed by businesses in my constituency, but we need to do more and a full review, perhaps with some safeguards for those businesses that may not be able to weather an increase in rates, is certainly something we should consider.
The second area of the small business Bill that I particularly welcome relates to the fact that, despite what banks tells us, small and medium-sized businesses still find it very hard to access competitively priced finance. Every time I visit my local shopping area or business park, someone tells me of the problems they have getting finance in order to grow and invest. I welcome the steps the Government have already taken to ease access to finance, such as the introduction of the business bank, but it is now time to go further, which is why I welcome the steps to force banks to refer businesses to other providers.
We are told that, for many first-time small business borrowers, the rejection rate from banks is about 50%, often simply because the bank’s risk assessment process is so rigid or the sector profile is so inflexible that a small or growing business is rejected out of hand, regardless of how viable or sustainable it is. Therefore, it is only right that they can be referred to other banks and alternative providers with different business models. If the provision fails to improve access to finance, I will again call for more direct action to support our vital SME network.
The third measure I particularly welcome is the commitment to level the playing field. As John Longworth has said:
“The vast majority of law-abiding businesses will also favour a clampdown on rogue employers who do not pay the National Minimum Wage”.
Of course those businesses will agree with that. The vast majority of SME owners and operators are decent, caring people who often act as the second welfare system, helping employees cover unexpected costs through loans or advance wages, avoiding other sources of lending. They also often help their staff with financial planning and managing their finances. That is because the vast majority of SMEs recognise that their greatest asset is their staff. For those who do not recognise that and who want to take advantage, it is right that we crack down and make everyone play by the same rules.
I believe that those measures, combined with many others in that and other Bills announced yesterday, will go a long way to help to tackle the cost of living challenge. It is a challenge that we have to rise to, and I believe that we are doing that. It is not easy—no one ever said it would be—but I am sure that, despite the challenges faced and the pain we have endured, there is only one Government who can rise to the challenges we still face, only one Government with a long-term economic plan to secure our future, and only one Government with a parliamentary programme that builds on our achievements. That is this Government and they should be supported.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate, which takes place in the atmosphere generated by the negative attitudes of the UK Independence party and others in the recent local and European elections. I urge people to be very cautious about starting to dance to the tune of xenophobes and closet racists or, indeed, open racists in their attitude towards society as a whole.
I compliment in particular the speeches of the right hon. Members for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) for highlighting the human consequences of what happens to people who migrate from one place to another. We should be aware of the fact that in every story there is a human story and in every tragedy there is a human tragedy. We should not suddenly shut the doors against anyone who is fleeing from violence, oppression or destitution, which is, indeed, what many people are doing.
Of course, the situation has consequences for our society, but people from this country have also sought to migrate to many other parts of the world in order to make a better life for themselves. This is the way of the modern world. If we start saying that nobody can come here, other countries might start saying that none of us can go there. These things go full circle, and we should be more cautious in our attitude to issues of migration and society.
I want to make two germane points and I will try to adhere to the 10 minutes suggested by Mr Speaker. First, the Queen’s Speech stated:
“The Bill will enhance the United Kingdom’s energy independence and security by opening up access to shale and geothermal sites and maximising North Sea resources.”
I urge a degree of caution before we rush down the road of fracking all over the country, particularly the north-west, which will have environmental consequences. Many different organisations hold briefing sessions in this House—it is a form of lobbying and there is nothing wrong with that—and I was astonished at the large attendance at yesterday evening’s Friends of the Earth briefing on fracking and its consequences. A very interesting speaker from Australia, where there has been much fracking with apparently limited controls, explained what has happened there. She pointed out that a vast amount of water is used for fracking and that it causes pollution when it is pumped up to ground level. Storage ponds are needed to allow the water to settle and the process has longer-term environmental consequences.
Indeed, the first line of fracking has caused earth tremors in Lancashire, and there has also been a significant number of earth tremors in the United States as a result of fracking. Although it is presented as a cheap form of energy—any cheap form of energy sounds attractive when we first hear of it, and there is all kind of talk about Klondike and the new gold rush—there are two problems. One is the congestion caused by extra traffic and the noise and other pollution caused by the process itself, and the other is the clean-up phase afterwards. Are we not building in potentially huge costs to the public sector in having to clean up all the environmental pollution that will result from the process?
Surely we should be thinking even more strongly than we have up to now about energy sustainability and security, by which I mean not necessarily producing vast amounts more, but using a lot less through better conservation, better insulation and more efficient forms of transport, as well as, increasingly, the use of renewable energy. It is populist to attack wind farms, but they make a significant contribution to our electricity supply and will continue to do so. They do not, of course, create the pollution problems of fracking or any other fossil energy. There will be a huge debate about fracking and I would be very cautious about going down that road, because of the pollution problems it causes.
The other issue I want to address is housing. I represent an inner-city constituency and am very proud to do so. We face massive housing problems. We have an image problem, in that everyone thinks that Islington is an extremely well-off, wealthy and great place to live. It is, indeed, a great place to live, but the housing market is totally out of control. A first-time buyer seeking to buy in my borough would need to be on a very substantial income indeed, so no MP need think about buying as a first-time buyer in Islington.
We also have a large social rented sector—it is mainly council-run, but there are some housing associations—which makes up about 40% of the market. Thirty per cent. of the population in my borough live in the private rented sector. They pay very high rents and have very good security as a result. Those in the private rented sector who are in receipt of housing benefit or any other kind of benefit now find that the Government’s benefit cap affects them in a very damaging way. They are unable to pay the rent from their housing benefit, and they cannot make up the gap between their housing benefit and the rent level from any other benefits or, indeed, their wages—their low wages; many people receiving housing benefit are already in work. The council does not have enough houses to put them in, so they are forced to move away from the borough to a private rented flat somewhere else in London or, in the case of other London boroughs, outside London. That means that families have to up sticks and move, caring and child care support arrangements disappear, and children travel very long distances to remain in local schools to try to maintain a link with the community in the desperate hope that there will one day be a council flat available for them to come back to. Not just in my borough but all over London significant numbers of very young children make very long journeys every morning to keep a place in a primary school.
Is all this avoidable? Yes, I believe it is. I welcome the moves that the Labour party and its Front Benchers have made on changing our attitudes to the private rented sector, the regulation of letting agents, environmental conditions, longevity of tenancies and the ending of the ludicrous charging and deposit scheme that many agencies promote. I suggest that at some point, however, we will have to face the fact that we cannot go on controlling benefit levels but not rent levels, and therefore forcing people who rely on benefits for all or part of their income to move away from the areas where they have traditionally lived and been a very important part of the community.
In introducing a ten-minute rule Bill last Session, I pointed out that London was significantly different from the rest of the country in this respect. Rents are significantly higher and there is a significantly greater churn of people in London than in most other parts of the country. I do not see why we should not involve local government in the solution. After all, local government is the primary housing authority. Why can we not have some form of rent registration and regulation—London-wide—that takes account of the needs and costs of producing and providing housing in London so that we do not lose out on the private rented sector altogether, but can keep our mix of communities?
I would not normally go along with much of what the London chamber of commerce and industry says, but it points out in a briefing note sent to Members for today’s debate that of their members in London
“59% of firms are experiencing a greater pressure to increase wages as a result of higher housing costs…42% of firms believe that higher housing costs are having a detrimental impact on their ability to recruit and retain staff”
and
“33% of firms believe that their employees’ punctuality and/or productivity is being affected by longer commutes as a result of not being able to afford to live in the capital.”
All that is absolutely true. Unless we ensure that there is a sufficient supply of housing for a whole range of people in London or any other big city, we will end up destroying our communities and increasing the pressure on longer and longer commuter rail lines, bus routes and roads, while not actually solving the problem. I hope that we will be able to make some progress on that.
My last point on housing is that my local authority, like others, assertively uses its planning powers to try to ensure planning gain from any private sector development that takes place, as is absolutely right and proper. Hitherto, it has been able to ensure that any new housing development of more than 10 units must include a proportion of affordable housing, including a proportion of social housing. Many developers try to get around that, so the council has levied a surcharge to try to ensure that there is sufficient money for local housing development. Islington has done very well. It has one of the largest council house building programmes in the country, which, ultimately, is the only solution to the housing crisis.
However, the Government came along and changed the regulation on office conversions so that these no longer require planning permission. A developer who buys an office block can therefore convert it into private sector housing without any social housing requirement whatsoever, and no local authority or planning authority has any say in whether the conversion should take place. I can understand the point that some local authorities might oppose the conversion of office blocks into housing to retain jobs, and I think that local authorities should have the right to do that and that local people should have the right to have a say. However, when a large number of office blocks are converted into housing, with the developer making no contribution whatsoever to resolving the local housing crisis, it is time for regulation and for the local authority to have a say in the matter.
For example, Archway tower, near Archway underground station, which was originally built by London Transport in 1967, has been used for a succession of offices, mostly in the public sector, but is now empty. It has been bought by a company called Essential Living, which is converting it into 120 flats for tenants earning somewhere above £80,000 a year, which is far more than anyone earns who works in the area. No contribution whatsoever is being made to the social housing needs of my borough. That is happening all across London; indeed, it will soon happen in cities across the country.
We therefore need regulation, local government input and more council housing, but above all we urgently need tough regulation of the private rented sector so that very many people do not go through the insecurity and indignity of being forced to move out of their community simply because landlords can put up rents to whatever level they like and that they think the market can bear. Surely we must understand that housing is a necessary right for everyone, and that all children deserve to be brought up in a decent, clean and dry household and to attend a local school without the insecurity of moving every six months.
Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)
I shall return to the comments made by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and talk about housing in the bulk of my speech, but may I first commend my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), my friend and neighbour, for moving the Loyal Address yesterday? She spoke with passion, wit and great substance, not just about D-day and the Navy but about Portsmouth. Portsmouth has had a good week because not only has my hon. Friend moved the Address, but it is the focal point for the D-day celebrations, and this week the Conservatives took control of Portsmouth city council from the tired and discredited Liberal Democrats. I can get away with saying that since none of them are in the Chamber.
This Queen’s Speech is pro-business, pro-work and pro-aspiration. I want to focus my remarks today on aspiration—the aspiration that people in my constituency and across the country have to look after themselves and their family, to provide security for their retirement and to have a home of their own. However, I first want to address the issue of housing.
Housing development was a big issue in the elections in Fareham. Demographic change and a growing population mean that we need more homes if we are to enable people to get on the housing ladder and if we are to accommodate the families currently in overcrowded affordable housing or social housing. The challenge we face is where to site the 6,000 homes needed, for sale and for rent, to accommodate the demand.
Fareham has expanded during the past 40 years. Where I live in the west of the constituency, there used to be strawberry fields. In the last decade, the focus of development has predominantly been on brownfield sites, not greenfield ones or, indeed, strawberry fields. Although that approach to development has preserved green space in a predominantly suburban area, there have been issues with the provision of infrastructure. We have relied on expanding existing schools, rather than building new ones to accommodate demand. We have tweaked road junctions and lay-outs, rather than building new roads. GP surgeries have become overcrowded. For example, the Jubilee surgery in Titchfield has about 2,500 patients per GP, compared with an average of 1,800 patients per GP across the country as a whole. As a consequence, GP surgeries have shrunk their catchment areas and required families moving less than a couple of miles to change surgeries if they no longer live in the same GP catchment area. The use of brownfield sites has therefore imposed more pressure on existing infrastructure.
As a community, we have now reached a decision point about how to accommodate current population growth and where new homes are built. How and where do we build the 6,000 homes that Fareham needs? Brownfield sites have largely been utilised, so Fareham faces significant challenges. Do we merge existing communities so that Portchester merges with Fareham, Fareham with Stubbington, and Titchfield with Titchfield Common, creating a ribbon of development along the A27, which bisects my constituency? Alternatively, do we create a new settlement, where we create a vision for the future in which the services and infrastructure are tailored to meet the needs of the new community, rather than being cobbled together from what is already in the area?
Fareham, as a community, has decided to go down the second route. It will have a new settlement within its borough boundaries called Welborne. It will be on a greenfield site to the north of the M27. I am the first to acknowledge that that is not an easy decision for the communities that border the site, such as Funtley, the north of Fareham and Wickham. However, it is supported by the borough as a whole. Having Welborne in the borough plan to meet the future housing needs of the constituency protects other sites from development. An application to build in the gap between Fareham and Stubbington is less likely to succeed because we have a robust plan in place to meet housing demand in the borough. The Government’s planning reforms have been implemented to good effect in Fareham.
For Welborne to gain the full consent of the community, it is vital that the infrastructure is of a high standard and is provided when it is needed, rather than when the existing services are creaking at the seams. The developers get that and will finance the bulk of the infrastructure. Plans are in place for community facilities, new schools and new GP surgeries. A key part of the infrastructure provision is the creation of a four-way junction at junction 10 of the M27. That will improve road access to Welborne and the north of Fareham.
That junction is the main ask of the Solent local enterprise partnership in its bid to the local growth fund. The developers of the site, Fareham borough council, the Solent LEP and I have met the Housing Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), to press our case for that funding. The £90 million bid from the Solent LEP will ensure that we get the improvements that are needed to our road infrastructure to ensure that development takes place across Fareham and to facilitate improved access to the enterprise zone at Daedalus.
Welborne will meet the borough’s housing needs. Without it, fewer people will get on the housing ladder, there will be significant upward pressure on house prices and more families will be forced to live in accommodation that is too small for them. It is right for the Government to increase the supply of housing and to make it easier for people to own a home of their own. Owning one’s own home is an aspiration that many people save hard to fulfil. It took a decade of hard saving for my parents to buy their first home. My grandparents exercised their right to buy their council house. My family’s experiences motivate me to help others get on the housing ladder. That is why I support the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, which helps those who can afford mortgage payments but who do not yet have the deposit that lenders require.
The measures that the Government have taken, which have been built on in the Queen’s Speech, to tackle supply through planning reforms and the schemes to help affordability are vital to aid aspiration. We will improve social mobility and tackle inequality only if we make it easier for people to acquire assets such as a home of their own.
I shall touch briefly on the pension reforms in the Gracious Speech. They form part of the agenda on aspiration. The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), should be commended for pursuing collective defined contribution schemes. He recognises the shift in pensions, whereby the burden of risk has been transferred from employers in defined benefit schemes to individuals in defined contribution schemes. His approach of tackling that through pooling investment should help to reduce the investment risk that the individual faces.
The pensions tax Bill, which the Chancellor announced in the Budget, is part of a series of radical reforms to pensions since 2010. The implementation of auto-enrolment, the move to single-tier pensions and the end of compulsory annuitisation have transformed the pensions landscape. The Chancellor was right in the Budget to recognise that new landscape and to give people greater freedom in the use of their pension pot. The single-tier pension will float most pensioners off means-tested benefits. It is right to give people more freedom in how they use their pension pot and not simply to roll it over into an annuity offered by the pension provider. People are not getting a good deal from the way in which the annuities market is operating. Freedom will force providers to sharpen up their act and to offer better value annuities and a wider range of products to help people manage their income in retirement.
The key to the success of these proposals is the guidance guarantee. We need to ensure that people are equipped to make the best choices for themselves. From meeting various stakeholders in the pensions sector, I know that that is a cause of concern. How will we ensure that people have good guidance at the right point in their life? Simply having guidance at retirement is not enough, given that people’s needs change over the period of their retirement. How will we gather together all the information about people’s pensions and savings so that we can give them good quality guidance? Will there be a digital service that people can dip into at will, or will advice always be face-to-face or on the telephone, which would be more expensive? How will we ensure that people take up the offer of guidance, so that they get the support and help they need to make the most of the new freedoms that we provide? If we get the guidance process right, it will help more and more pensioners to make better use of the assets that they have accumulated over their working life and ensure that they have the income that they need in retirement.
Ensuring that people are able to build up a pension pot, to save and to have good quality accommodation, whether that is in the private sector through owner-occupation or in the rented sector, is important if we are to support aspiration in this country. Over the past four years, the Government have made huge strides towards helping people realise their aspirations of work, a home of their own and savings. We need to continue that work into the next Parliament.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to those on both Front Benches that I will not be here for the winding-up speeches, but I have to leave the House for personal reasons.
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) because he was a courteous and able Minister. He was very courteous in dealing with the Equitable Life issues, which were complex. I will touch on pensions a little later.
I will start by welcoming some of the measures in the Queen’s Speech. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I welcome the Modern Slavery Bill. It is an excellent piece of legislation. The draft Bill was rightly scrutinised before the Bill came before the House. I believe that the Bill will proceed with the good will of those on both sides of the House. It has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and others, but I just want to say that I will be very proud to be one of the Members of Parliament who helps to push that legislation through.
It is important not to lose sight of one issue in respect of that Bill. We must have adequate resources to ensure that measures can be taken against those who traffic people across our countries. As someone who represents a port community, I know how difficult that will be. We must have the right numbers, the right resources, the right intelligence and the right kit to ensure that there is adequate screening at ports and that people are brought to justice when they are caught. I welcome that piece of legislation.
I also welcome the announcement that the Government made a couple of days before the Queen’s Speech on pubcos and the need for adjudicators. There has been cross-party consensus on that. The House works very well on such issues. Many pub landlords in my area have suffered over the past few years because of the unscrupulous way in which the pub companies have dealt with them. Many pub companies bought lots of property across the United Kingdom at the height of the market when prices were high and got their fingers burnt. The victims of that are the tenants who are in tied premises. The proposal is an excellent way forward.
I also welcome the plastic bag legislation. I say that as a Welshman because in my part of the world, we do not have carrier bags in many places. I feel quite stupid when I take my carrier bags with me to go shopping in London and other parts of England. People look at me rather oddly. Getting rid of carrier bags is not the end of the world. It is very good for the environment. It also helps in framing one’s thoughts and buying just the right amount of goods, rather than loading up one’s trolley too much, thinking that there will be all those free bags. The serious point is that it is good legislation and I will certainly support it.
I am rather confused about the measures that are coming out on pensions. I know that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) is very good on the theory of pensions. He knows the subject inside out. However, I am slightly concerned about the contradictions in the different pensions measures. We talk about liberating people to have choice on the one hand and collectiveness on the other. I want to see more detail before we move forward. We do need 21st century legislation on pensions because we are an ageing population, but I want to ensure that we mitigate the risks to workers in the private sector and to those who collect the state pension.
As a Welsh Member I do not often get the chance to engage with housing issues because of devolution, but I tell hon. Members from all parts of the United Kingdom that housing is a real and big issue whether someone lives in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or England, and we need to build more houses for the future. We also need the skills and work force for that—more bricklayers, plasterers, structural engineers and various things—and it is in all our interests for the United Kingdom to have an adequate skills base to ensure that.
This is not a partisan issue. Previous Conservative and Labour Governments have built numbers of houses, but we now face a massive challenge because the demography of our country is changing so much. Elderly people need to downsize. Many people who have had strokes and suffer from various things are living longer, and we need to adapt and build accommodation that is fit for purpose. We must help young entrants with the Help to Buy scheme—I know from my daughters and their peers how difficult it is—but we also need to look after older and less able people, and ensure a good mix of housing stock for our future citizens. I welcome legislation that will help that to happen.
The consensus ends on energy and the cost of living. It was interesting to hear the Prime Minister’s opening remarks on the Queen’s Speech. Government Members are now all on message to say that the long-term economic plan is working, but they have short memories. In 2010 an emergency Budget by the Chancellor stated that the core of the economic plan was to eliminate the deficit by 2015, but that has changed. Cuts are being felt by communities across the United Kingdom, but we have not eliminated the deficit and that is a big failure of the Government’s economic plan. It was their words, their actions, and their failure, and they will be judged on that as in recent elections and in the future—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) laughs, but I do not think we should be laughing when 5 million people vote for third and fourth parties in protest. They are doing it for a reason and the Government should be wary of that.
Albert Owen
I will take an intervention if the hon. Gentleman wants to defend the fact that the deficit has not been eliminated. [Interruption.] The Whip states from a sedentary position that the Labour party is not in power, but this Government said that they would eliminate the deficit and did not do so. They also said they would not raise VAT but did so straight away. They are raising taxes and ordinary working people across the country are paying more for fuel, not less, because every time they buy £1 of fuel, they pay 2.5p extra. The reality is not the mythical 20p that the Government talk about; it is the real 2.5p on every pound when people purchase fuel.
Michael Ellis
Does the hon. Gentleman think that he is rather like the hypothetical arsonist who starts a fire somewhere and then criticises firefighters for not putting it out quickly enough? Labour has the responsibility, which it is abrogating, and this Government have been fixing Labour’s problems.
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman needs to get out and about. That might be what Conservative central office is telling him, but he needs to get out across the country and ask himself why people are genuinely suffering as a consequence of the actions his Government have taken. Blaming the Labour party is old hat and will not work. Carry on doing that, and we will see at the next election that the Government are judged on their record, not that of previous Governments.
I want to say the three letters that the Prime Minister will never admit to—VAT—because this is about trust in politics. When the leader of a party tells the country that he will not do something and then immediately does it, the country does not forget. This is about trust in politics and this Prime Minister. Indeed, to be fair to the Deputy Prime Minister, before the election he warned that the Conservatives would put up VAT, but he has now jumped into bed with them and is pushing those reforms through.
I think there is a big challenge for energy, and whichever party was in government would have had to reform the energy market. I supported many of the reforming measures in the Energy Bill, but the cost of living crisis has pushed up energy prices beyond what is reasonable and what households can afford. I think it is a missed opportunity for the Queen’s Speech not to contain a consumer Bill for helping with energy prices.
The Government ridicule the fact that the Opposition have come up with a energy freeze, which they say is populist, yet energy companies are starting to do it. The Government need to take a lead on that and not allow energy prices to go beyond the means of ordinary people. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) mentioned people who are off-grid. The Queen’s Speech contains an infrastructure Bill, but no mention of extending gas mains to many households in the United Kingdom. Many off-grid households have to pay a heck of a lot more for their fuel. They do not benefit from dual fuel bonuses and are not able to switch in the way that the Energy Secretary boasts about. They are also paying considerably more for their energy. The Winter Fuel Allowance Payments (Off Gas Grid Claimants) Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Angus would help to alleviate that, but we need to go further and build infrastructure.
When the Energy Committee, of which I am a member, discussed shale gas three or four years ago, the Government dismissed it because they did not think it worth taking forward—hon. Members can see the responses to that report. We then had another report, and I think it is important to have energy security. Rather than importing foreign gas and oil, we should produce our own if the potential is there. However, I am confused about the way those measures have been handled, moving towards exploration of shale gas, and from what I heard from the Energy Secretary today, things are no clearer.
We must bring communities with us to enjoy the benefits of shale gas together, and there should be local benefits. I am certainly not a nimby and I represent a constituency that has a nuclear power station, offshore wind farms in close proximity, too many onshore wind farms—they need to be moved as new development takes place—and tidal power. I think we should look at the bigger picture, and find local but also national benefits from a gas and oil bonanza, whether it be in the North sea or from shale. We should be putting aside money and ring-fencing some of those profits for local communities and for national benefit, and that could help to fund extension of the gas mains that are causing problems for many of our communities. I know that those on the Opposition Front Bench are listening to these arguments, just as they listened to arguments about people who are off-grid being protected by the regulator. The market does not work in the same way for people who are off-grid, as I explained, and they do not have the protection of a regulator. The Labour party is moving forward on that issue, and such measures could easily have been included in the Queen’s Speech.
People are suffering on a day-to-day basis from a cost of living crisis in the real world. Hon. Members should not take my word for that; they should listen to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). When he goes out and about and listens to people, he hears that there is a problem. There is a problem, and the Queen’s Speech should have helped to deal with it. Over the next 11 months I think that we will go at a slow pace and little will be achieved. There will then be an opportunity for real choice at a general election, and this failed Government will be turfed out because they have failed to do the things they said they would, and they have done many things that they said they would not do.
Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). I agreed with some of the things he said, particularly that this Government will be judged on their record—I am very happy for the Government to be judged on their record at the general election. He mentioned shopping in England, but he should not be too embarrassed at taking his bags with him. I take my bags to the supermarket, and the only reason people look oddly at me is because I tend to fill rather robust Waitrose bags in a Tesco supermarket.
This was a good Queen’s Speech. It has been criticised for containing only 11 Bills, but earlier this morning we approved the carry-over of six Bills from the previous Session, so that makes 17. As somebody who is in favour of less government and less legislation, I think it is a good Queen’s Speech—the culmination of a balanced programme in the face of the economic and financial crisis that this Government inherited. As I said, I am happy for this Government to be judged on their record, and they will be judged on the growth, employment and inflation figures.
One of the topics we are considering today is energy—whether from solar panels, wind turbines or shale gas. How we get it, what we pay for it and what we are willing to give up to secure its future continue to be issues. Nationally, I have campaigned hard over the past 15 years with many colleagues in this House to change national policy in respect of large-scale, badly sited onshore wind farm developments, in response to a veritable barrage of applications faced by rural constituencies, from developers desperate to profit from generous subsidies. Twelve years ago in my constituency we saw off an application for some 32 wind turbines in the Winterbourne valley and, more recently—we fought this over several years—another wind farm at Silton, which at the end of 2012 the inspector ruled was a totally inappropriate development in a country area, on grounds of intrusion on the landscape and historic buildings.
The campaigning has started to pay real dividends, with a welcome commitment by the Prime Minister that the next Conservative Government would end any additional public subsidy for onshore wind beyond what is already planned and ensure that large-scale onshore wind farms would be determined by the locally led planning system, as opposed to a national infrastructure regime. We need to amend planning policy to give even greater protection to the landscape, heritage and other concerns.
Solar power is another renewable energy source that has enjoyed unprecedented growth in recent years. Similar action to curb over-inflated solar subsidies in 2011 led to cuts in the feed-in tariff that had so long supported the deployment of solar farms. That drove down the cost on consumer bills and, despite the concerns of the industry, solar has continued to thrive, as evidenced by the number of applications across my constituency. Back in the Winterbourne valley, where we fought wind turbines 12 years ago, the same landowner tried to develop 175 acres—for those who do not live in rural areas, that is about 110 football pitches—by covering them with wind turbines. I am pleased to say that the residents, who probably had a degree of self-interest, took the application to judicial review and it has now been quashed.
I have no objections to solar power as such, and in most cases it is infinitely preferable to towering industrial wind turbines, stamping their carbon-intensive footprint across our beautiful landscapes. However, the Energy Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), was right when he said that support for solar as part of our future energy mix does not equate to wanting the
“uncontrolled expansion of solar on the countryside”.
That means, in future, favouring domestic, retail, industrial and commercial rooftops and on-site generation, such as deployment on brownfield sites and car parks. In my view, our locally led planning system should be the sole judge of such developments.
Shale gas—I mention this because it was also mentioned in the Queen’s Speech—is a valuable resource that we should be considering, but when fracking takes place in our communities it, too, should come under the control of our democratically elected councillors and local communities, because they are essential to the decision-making process. Our future energy supply and security must remain at the top of this country’s agenda, but that should not mean sacrificing our natural environment or the quality of life of local communities, whether in Dorset or elsewhere.
Let me turn to the final paragraphs of yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, which included the words:
“My government will work to promote reform in the European Union, including a stronger role for member states and national parliaments.”
That is fundamental. It is a positive message that, after the European Parliament election results—which sent us a clear message—says that we need to look positively at how we develop our relationship with the European Union.
The rise of UKIP and other far-right movements across Europe is a manifestation of the electorate’s disapproval of mainstream political parties and their handling of the financial crisis that engulfed the world, and particularly some European states, in 2008. Their dissatisfaction is justified, but the European elections come at a time when the British and European economies are turning the corner. With growth on the up—that it is not just my assessment; the International Monetary Fund and the OECD have indicated that in this country growth is up and, although modest, consistent, with employment numbers rising—I think the overall sentiment towards the European Union has been improving, both at home and across the rest of Europe. Despite UKIP’s rise in popularity, 70% of the voters who turned out in the European elections voted for parties that want Britain to remain part of the EU.
I urge all the mainstream political parties represented in this House not to use the EU as a fig leaf to cover other failings. What is needed is leadership and real solutions to the challenges facing this country and Europe. The populist and xenophobic panaceas offered by far-right parties are not the answer, as our not-so-distant history has shown us.
Unfortunately, UKIP Members of the European Parliament have consistently failed to work for their constituents and promote British positions. For about a month, I tried—not particularly scientifically—to ask virtually everybody I met in my constituency whether they could tell me who were the two UKIP Members of the European Parliament for the south-west. I did not find a single person who could answer the question. Many of them knew who the three Conservative MEPs were—and the one Liberal Democrat MEP—who, I have to say, have all been diligent over the past five years, working hard for their constituents. The UKIP MEPs are the least hard-working of all MEPs. At a time when Britain in Europe needs all hands on deck, they have been sleeping on the job and I do not expect the new batch to perform any better. It is more important that the rest of the MEPs we send to Brussels are influential, involved, active and constructive, and are prepared to engage, build alliances, lead, write reports and vote on the decisions that affect all of us.
Of course, Nigel Farage is popular. He is the average bloke we might meet in the pub—well, not quite average. The answer to every problem, as far as he is concerned, is either Brussels or immigrants; or, if we put them together, “It’s foreigners”—although not his wife, who happens to be German. He complains about hearing foreign voices on the train. When Mr Farage is on the Eurostar, travelling to Brussels, and he crosses the Belgian border, does he speak Flemish or French? I wonder what the answer is.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and for his considered comments on UKIP and those on the more extreme edges of the debate. The point he makes about immigration is moot, because people are talking about it on the doorstep. However, I think it would have been a different conversation on the doorstep, with his constituents and mine, if UKIP had elevated its conversation to talk about the real issues around pressures on services, and if, for example, Nathan Gill, the UKIP MEP elected in Wales, had fronted up to the fact that, as we now know, he employed immigrant labour for his own business. It seems to be a case of do as I say, not as I do.
Mr Walter
The hon. Gentleman is very perceptive, because I have Nathan Gill’s name written down here and I was going to mention him in a moment or two.
I want to continue briefly talking about Nigel Farage, because in UKIP terms he is quite moderate. What concerns me most, when listening to many UKIP members and supporters, is that they use the word Gypsy, which is for them Roma, which means Romanian, which therefore means that all Romanians are criminals. Bringing together those terms in a very ignorant way is something our hard-working European partners find deeply offensive. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Nathan Gill, the newly-elected UKIP MEP for Wales, who has been employing large numbers of eastern Europeans and accommodating them in bunkhouses, for which he then charges them rent. I think he has probably done a great service for his own pocket. Whether he has done a great service for the British economy, I am not sure.
If we are going to look at migration, we must remember that some 2.3 million EU nationals live in the United Kingdom. It is estimated that they contribute about £25 billion to the UK economy. In fact, there are fewer eastern Europeans living in the UK than there are UK nationals living in the rest of Europe. Some 1 million UK nationals live either permanently or temporarily in Spain, which is 300,000 more than the number of Poles living in the United Kingdom. However, most of the Poles living in the United Kingdom are here to work and to make a contribution, whereas most of the UK nationals living in Spain are there to use the local services because they are retired and elderly.
We need a sense of perspective, because we have a great opportunity. This year we are negotiating a new trade deal with the United States—the transatlantic trade and investment partnership—which will bring together 40% of the world’s GDP in one effective single market. That deal is too good to turn our backs on. I therefore hope we can turn our backs on the UKIP remedy for our problems. I hope we will treat the commemorations this year of the first world war and the 70th anniversary tomorrow of the D-day landings and the start of the liberation of Europe as a siren call to build on what the founding fathers of the European Union saw as the goal. It is not a centralised Government in Brussels; it is the European nations working together in harmony for the prosperity of all our peoples.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter)—or rather, I do not thank him because I am trying to wean myself off the subject of Europe but I cannot, given his speech. It is 39 years to the day since the United Kingdom, by a majority of two to one, decided to remain in what was then the European Economic Community. It is interesting to remind ourselves that in March of that year Harold Wilson declared:
“I believe that our renegotiation objectives have been substantially though not completely achieved”
and that the Government would recommend a vote in favour of continued membership. As I was reading that, I wondered whether there is not a Prime Minister somewhere who might be tempted to use a similar phrase not too far ahead in the future. As the hon. Gentleman was speaking, I checked the turnout in the European elections. For different reasons we may have started on the same side on the subject of Europe and are no longer on it, but does he not share my extraordinary distress at the turnout? This year it was 19.5% in the Czech Republic, 28.9% in Hungary, 13% in Slovakia, 25% in Croatia, 22% in Poland, 20% in Slovenia and 36% in the UK. The turnout in the referendum 39 years ago was 67%. That shows us a disengagement and democratic illegitimacy that national Parliaments will not address. That is not the subject of my speech, however. What I really want to talk about was not in the Queen’s Speech: cities.
I care deeply about cities and I want, in this context, to talk about the core cities, particularly Birmingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, said in his final sentence that the real problem we have not addressed is devolution in England outside London. At the moment, we might be slightly more concerned about devolution in Scotland and the vote in September. I am concerned about that, but the truly unfinished business, which none of the party political manifestos, as I see them emerging, have so far addressed and neither did the Queen’s Speech, is the question of what we do outside London.
One of my great regrets is that towards 1999 and 2000, there was a huge tension in the Labour party over whether to go for regional government or city regions. In the end, we went for neither. That, combined with the abolition of regional development agencies, has meant that we now have a situation where the local enterprise partnerships that have replaced them might not have the capacity to deal with that issue. They may be too small in their configuration to be truly strategic.
With the exception of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who I would not dream of offending as he is in the Chamber, there are only a few people who understand the problem and are putting forward plans. I would like to mention Lord Heseltine and Lord Adonis. On the Government Benches, the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who has responsibility for cities, understands what needs to be done, but I am not sure whether he has been given the means to do what is required.
There are two things I need to say in this context. First, I am German by birth. Actually, I am Bavarian by birth. Bavaria has a population of 12.5 million. It is in itself a federal structure made up of seven units. Its capital, Munich, has been a socialist city since time immemorial and it is surrounded by a conservative state. It is so conservative that when the Christian Democrats win it is not a question of whether they win but by how much they win. The important point is that I understand subsidiarity, federal structures and the importance of cities in generating wealth. Cities are the engines of economic growth—they do not reflect the national economy.
Secondly, I am a Birmingham, Edgbaston MP and my predecessor was a man called Neville Chamberlain, who was the son of a man called Joe Chamberlain who died 100 years ago. Joe Chamberlain was a Unitarian who did not approve of statues, so Birmingham does not have a statue of him. However, every day I go up the stairs to my office and there in front of me in the Committee corridor is Joe Chamberlain with his orchid and a monocle. He turned what was then one of the country’s worst governed cities into one of the best in three years. He did that after being elected as ceremonial mayor and making himself executive mayor. He municipalised water, which, as a public good, was not allowed to make a profit. He municipalised gas, which was allowed to make profits that were used to subsidise the business rates. He had a huge housing programme and he went for free education across the city. He failed in his attempt to make education completely secular and non denominational; something which, more than 100 years later, Birmingham may regret.
The key thing was that he was a local leader who gave up the town hall, with regret, to go to Westminster. He was said to have made the weather. How many civic leaders do we have these days who we can say are making the weather? We can say it of Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson, but the names of Richard Leese and Albert Ball ought to be rolling off our tongues in the way that the names of Cabinet Ministers do. But they do not.
With the greatest of respect to the DCLG teams on either side of the House, DCLG questions is hardly the big ticket seller. Anyone who seriously suffers from insomnia could not be better advised than to take a lesson on how central Government is funded. There is nothing designed to send someone to sleep faster than being given central Government funding formulae. Yet funding is where the money lies. Remember the line about Watergate? “Follow the money.” When we follow the money, we will also find where the power is. This is why the money that comes from central Government cannot be at the grace and favour of Westminster or Whitehall, which decides by pitting city against city or rural against urban. Our big cities need independent funding streams.
The council tax model is beyond repair. Previous speakers talked about how great it is that council tax is not increasing. In our big cities we have a history of council tax being artificially held low. Governments of both parties have talked about re-banding, but then lost their nerve. We are not re-banding, unless the Secretary of State tells us that we are. On top of that, we have a cap which says that beyond a certain level we are going to need—[Interruption.] Yes, it is a cap. It requires a referendum. I recognise that it is a cap in everything but name.
Ms Stuart
If the cap fits, I wear it.
The funding streams for our cities are not working, which is a problem. I want to spell out some stark facts. I can pick any set of statistics and paint whatever picture of Birmingham I choose. It could be the most enterprising, the fastest growing and the most amazing city that has everything: theatre, football, ballet, orchestras. You name it, we have it. On the other hand, we have just about everything that is dark. We have the fastest growing population under the age of 25; 40% are under 25 and 30% are under 15. On family patterns and in terms of family sizes, we are Bradford. In terms of skills gaps, we are Leicester. In 18 months’ time, on the current trajectory, the city could go bankrupt. This is not just scary talk; it is the truth. What does that mean? In order to give our cities proper power and to make them work properly, we have to look at different ways of dealing with them.
We are told that Deutsche Bank is coming to Birmingham and creating 1,000 new jobs, but I have talked to Network Rail in the context of Birmingham New Street and asked what has surprised those most involved in the five years of the New Street regeneration. I was told that it was the increase in regional commuting. We have a city with ten constituencies, of which two are consistently in the top three of youth unemployment and general unemployment: Hodge Hill and Ladywood. We then create 1,000 jobs for Deutsche Bank in or on the edge of Ladywood, and all that happens is that we bring in employment from Warwickshire, Solihull and Worcestershire. The problems building up in the city are not being addressed.
There are some things that Birmingham can do by itself. I am working on something called the Birmingham baccalaureate, which is trying to combine the English baccalaureate employability skills with what local employers want to make sure that when we create jobs, we also create the kind of jobs that they will respond to. For our cities to grow, we must make sure that the wealth that is generated in the cities stays in the cities.
That takes me to the one thing that grieves me the most in the last five years: the wretched imposition of police commissioners, whom I would abolish tomorrow without shedding a single tear. We made having directly elected mayors the subject of a referendum, which was a big mistake. If we want to devolve power in England outside London, we need strategic directly elected mayors. We need them to work on boundaries that are beyond the local authority boundaries. If we look at the Birmingham city boundaries and at the NHS commissioning boundaries, the latter go by patient flows around the hospitals, which are not respecters of local authority boundaries.
We may think cities are about buildings. They are not. They are about flows of people. It is our job to provide the structure for the flows of people, and to make cities thrive and be economically successful. What I really want—it was not in the Queen’s Speech—is strategic elected regional mayors. I want direct flows of finance to go to the city units. I do not care whether it is a property tax, a percentage of VAT or whatever; they need a consistent and reliable stream. That is a challenge for all of us as politicians.
My last point is that we need to realise that doing the same everywhere is not only not fair, it is inappropriate. Divergence and differentiation—horses for courses in different places—is something that is politically difficult to accept but, in terms of devolving power properly, is the right thing to do.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who painted an honest and balanced picture of the city of Birmingham. She gave startling figures on the disengagement from the EU in terms of the voter percentage turnout. I agreed with her on devolution in England outside London and on cities being the engines of economic growth. As a London MP, I completely agree on that. We only need to look at the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to see how successful a mayor can be and what he and his team can deliver.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) on her outstanding proposal of the Loyal Address yesterday. It seems incredible that she is only the second woman to propose the Loyal Address in the 57 years of Her Majesty’s reign. Of course, it was ably seconded by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke).
Ms Gisela Stuart
I was reading the speech this morning. I thought it was stunning, including the reference to Eric Prickles, which I really loved. However, I do not think that the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) was the second woman; she may be the second Conservative. Just for the record, I distinctly remember Oona King moving the Loyal Address from our side.
Mary Macleod
I thank the hon. Lady for that correction. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North was the second Conservative woman to propose the Loyal Address, and I was very pleased she did. She did herself, her party and her constituency proud.
We heard earlier from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) who talked about the Gracious Speech in terms of less is more: there was less legislation in it than expected. I completely agree with him and with others that less government and less legislation is a good thing and that we have quality and not quantity in the year ahead.
I was personally disappointed that my ten-minute rule Bill on the succession to hereditary titles and estates was not included. I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you are as amazed as I am that in the vast majority of cases women in this country still cannot inherit hereditary titles or estates. Of the 92 hereditary peers in the House of Lords, only two are women. At some stage—hopefully sooner rather than later—that really needs to change.
We have already heard about the importance of this year as the centenary of the start of the first world war. Another important event this year was mentioned by the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) who spoke about the Scottish referendum. I hope that many Members will get involved in it. I believe it is important to give Scotland more fiscal powers and I hope that we can debate that issue before the referendum takes place in September. I believe that the Scottish people are sensible and pragmatic and that Scotland is an enterprising nation, and I hope and feel sure that the Scottish people will do the right thing and affirm that we are better together.
The legislation outlined in the Queen’s Speech underlines the Government’s commitment to delivering our long-term economic plan. As my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) said, it is all about being pro-work, pro-business and pro-aspiration. The last year before the general election is an appropriate time to look back at the last four years. Unlike the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), I think that this Government can say a lot about what they have achieved—whether it be cutting income tax for 25 million people, taking 3 million of the lowest paid people out of tax altogether, cutting the deficit by a third, helping businesses create 1.5 million new private sector jobs, creating 400,000 more new small businesses, making our corporation tax the lowest in the G20, getting net immigration down by a third—I could go on. We need to recognise the many things that this Government have achieved in difficult circumstances over the last four years.
As I look locally at Brentford and Isleworth in west London, I can see what those things mean for my constituents. We are in the top 10 constituencies for business growth across the country. Since 2010, unemployment has gone down by 25% and youth unemployment down by 38%, while crime has gone down 15% across the borough—the second biggest decrease in London. There is much, then, to be recognised in what has been done in my constituency of 95,000 voters and 120,000 residents—one of the biggest in the country—including the Mayor’s outer-London fund in giving Brentford and Hounslow £4.8 million. Businesses are expanding; the new BSkyB campus hopes to increase from 8,000 to 12,000 people; a new free school has been set up; and the Health Secretary has prevented the closure of A and E at Charing Cross hospital and has secured £50 million to build a new hospital.
Much has been done, but there is, of course, more to do, which is what we have in front of us today. I believe that this Queen’s Speech was all about helping families and backing small businesses. As the small business ambassador for London, I would like first to look at what this means for small businesses. Secondly, I want to say a few words about support for child care in helping families. Thirdly, like other Members I shall speak about housing. I shall also mention supporting schools and finally touch on the Modern Slavery Bill.
On small businesses, my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) ably mentioned the challenges that he and small businesses have to face generally. He reminded us of how important small businesses are to the economy, making up 99% of all UK businesses. If all the sole traders were to take on just one person, we would eliminate unemployment across the country, as he said. That provides an important sense of perspective. A lot has been done to support small businesses, whether it be through encouraging start-ups, through StartUp Britain or the “Business is GREAT” campaign, through start-up loans, the new enterprise allowance or by encouraging growth through reducing corporation tax and extending small business rate relief, increasing investment allowance and doubling the lending for export finance.
Increased access to finance in general is important, with the setting up of the Business bank and the introduction of the enterprise finance guarantee. Improving skills is relevant, too, with 1.7 million new apprentices since 2010, making a huge difference to young people’s lives. We have seen 17 new university technical colleges, with a further 33 in development. I would really like one in west London, so I hope to work on that over the next year. We have cut red tape, improved business advice and achieved much for women in enterprise—there are now more women in work than ever before, and more female entrepreneurs than ever before. A lot has been done to help support them.
The Prime Minister was good enough to visit me in Brentford to meet some of my female entrepreneurs, who certainly spoke very clearly to him about where they needed further support. Whether it be “lovegiveink”, Anila’s Sauces, Plumber UK or SprinkledMagic, these small businesses have been set up by enterprising women who will, I am sure, go from strength to strength. We just need more of them. The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill will, I think, help even further: it is all about building a stronger economy and supporting businesses. It should help to deal with some of the issues that many businesses talk to me about—access to finance, late payments, access to Government contracts, red tape and so forth. Those things are all important to small businesses. This Bill will really help them by reducing the burden of regulation, helping them to get paid faster by large companies, and supporting them through public procurement—I want to see many more small businesses getting the opportunity to get a slice of the bigger contracts that are often difficult for them to secure. The Bill will provide support for the low paid and help pub landlords to get a fair deal. This Bill, the first of its kind, will achieve much for small business.
Secondly, supporting child care is crucial to help people at an important time of life. This Government have already done a lot to support it, although there is certainly more to do. I was at a meeting this morning with Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of easyJet, and there was a whole range of talented business women in the room. She spoke of her frustration at how many great women in the middle ranks of business drop out of their careers, partly owing to the high cost of child care. We really need to try to do more to help with that. We have already funded 15 hours of free child care a week for all three and four-year-olds and introduced shared parental leave, which will make a difference. This Bill will offer tax-free child care to almost 2 million families, meeting 85% of the child care costs of families on universal credit. That will affect people’s lives fundamentally and make a real difference to families in my constituency and elsewhere around the country.
Thirdly, housing is very important, as some hon. Members have mentioned, and it is a particularly big issue in London. I was very pleased to take my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to Brentford to see some of the developments taking place there, particularly how Brentford has been completely transformed from Commerce road to the south side of the High street right up to Kew bridge, with many new housing developments taking place. From 2011 to 2021, the population of London is expected to rise by a million, so we will hit the 9 million mark before New York and approach 10 million by 2030. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned population growth in his contribution.
Those figures mean that we need at least another 450,000 jobs for Londoners in the next 10 years, and another 400,000 homes. It is therefore important for us to support people and help them to meet their housing needs. I am pressing my local authority in Hounslow to provide a much better mix of housing, and to ensure that affordable housing is available so that people can live where they need to live. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider a measure aimed specifically at London, possibly in connection with the Help to Buy scheme. Perhaps the Government could guarantee a higher percentage, or perhaps something could be done to help people who aspire to buy their own homes but who find it difficult to raise a deposit of 10% or 20% when house prices in London are so high.
My borough is the fourth fastest-growing in London, and I know that we need skills to support population growth. I have taken the Secretary of State to see a potential new school site in the ISIS housing development in Commerce road, and I hope that it can be pushed through with the help of Hounslow council and the Department for Education, because there is an intense local need for new primary schools and, subsequently, secondary schools. Much more needs to be done to help cities with problems relating to population growth, housing and education.
My right hon. Friends the Members for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) spoke very articulately about the Modern Slavery Bill, as did the hon. Member for Islington North. The hon. Gentleman said that every story was a human story and every tragedy a human tragedy, and how right he was. Female genital mutilation has already been mentioned today, but the Government are also trying to do more this summer to raise awareness of forced marriage. Pupils at some of my local schools go off on holiday to places such as Pakistan during the summer, and forced marriages take place during that time.
We all need to speak out about such issues. I think that the Modern Slavery Bill will form part of our legacy, and I hope that Members on both sides of the House will work together to deliver what I believe will be one of the first Acts in the world to deal with practices which, although we can hardly believe it, still take place across the world: human trafficking, slavery, forced labour and domestic servitude. If all Members stand up against those practices and speak with one voice, they can have an immensely powerful influence. The Bill will protect victims by introducing an anti-slavery commissioner and tougher measures to ensure that slave drivers face justice. I am sure that we in the House can say with one voice that the actions of such people will not be tolerated, and that we will definitely do something about it.
I am entirely in favour of the measures that were announced in the Queen’s Speech. The best way to ensure that there is a good standard of living for all is to continue to support the working economy and encourage everyone to make the most of the opportunities that are available to them. I commend the work that the Government have already done to help businesses and hard-working families, and I welcome the developments that are still to come in the year ahead.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. It may help the House if I clarify a fact before I call the next speaker. The issue of the gender of Members of Parliament who have proposed the Loyal Address was mentioned yesterday by the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt)—in an excellent speech—and the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), and this afternoon by the hon. Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod). It is a fact that until yesterday only one woman, namely Lady Tweedsmuir, had proposed the Loyal Address, but Oona King and others have seconded it. I thought that if I enlightened the House, it might help to keep the facts straight.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I am grateful for the chance to participate in the debate, and it is nice to be doing so just after the length of time that it has taken for women to be able to contribute to the proceedings of the House has been highlighted. I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) and others are especially pleased to celebrate that today.
I believe that my constituents who watched the Queen’s Speech were looking for measures that would give them a sense of confidence and security about the future—a sense that there would be secure jobs, that they would have stable homes, and that they would be able to get on rather than having to scrape by wondering from week to week how things would pan out. There were a few welcome measures. I was pleased to hear the announcement about free school meals, and any investment in helping families with the cost of child care is welcome too. However, I want to say something very clearly and strongly to Ministers about an issue that is brushed aside each time it is raised.
Far too many people in this country who are in work are working in poverty, and that is simply not acceptable. The measures that Ministers talk about, such as the raising of the tax threshold, are not sufficient on their own, because the lowest-paid workers, particularly those on zero-hours contracts, are unlikely to benefit from them. Any fiscal measures must be accompanied by much firmer and more determined action on low pay. That is why we have spoken of the need to be much more proactive in addressing the phenomenon of zero-hours contracts, and to take much more energetic action to ensure that the national minimum wage increasingly becomes a wage on which people can live and raise their families.
I also think that we should take much firmer action in bearing down on some of the basic living costs that families face: the costs of food, energy and housing. I agree with other Members who have drawn attention to the need to increase affordable housing supply. In Trafford, in my part of Greater Manchester, housing costs are relatively high. They are not on the scale experienced by Members with seats in London and the south-east, but, in Greater Manchester terms, Trafford is an expensive place in which to live. That applies particularly to people in private rented accommodation, who constitute a substantial proportion of my constituents.
Those people will be very disappointed by the deficiencies in the Queen’s Speech in this regard, because they are already being priced out of their accommodation. If they complain about its quality, the landlord will tell them to move out, and the knowledge that the landlord holds all the cards makes them feel deeply insecure about their tenancies. It is very regrettable that the Government have not been more active in relation to that substantial housing sector. Many people in my constituency aspire to own their homes and we want to support them, but we must recognise that a large number of people are living in private rented accommodation, and will continue to do so because they cannot afford, or do not have stable enough incomes, to commit themselves to buying their own homes. I implore the Government to think about what more can be done for those households.
However, it was energy that I really wanted to discuss this afternoon. Let me first say a little about energy costs. We must all be relieved that last winter was so mild. I know that many of my constituents really fear their energy bills—especially disabled people, older people and those who are bringing up young children, because they are at home more often, and because the vulnerability of many family members requires the heating to be turned on and turned up. It is because of that real fear that I want to say to Government Members that their scepticism about Labour’s 20-month price freeze is totally misplaced. The proposal has been greatly welcomed by my constituents, because it will give them a chance to manage bills and to plan a bit—perhaps to set some money aside for a rainy day to cope with day-to-day living expenses. I think that Government Members should think carefully about the nature of that commitment, and about what more can be done to encourage other energy companies to follow the example of those that have already shown what can be done.
I particularly wanted to speak about energy supply, in the context of the importance of energy security and managing climate impact. The issue is of huge concern and interest in my constituency, and it is also an issue of considerable pride. Trafford college is at the cutting-edge in offering renewables installation training, for instance. It is also a very live issue in my constituency, because there is real concern about the environmental impact of the fracking measures announced in the Queen’s Speech, and that is what I want to talk about this afternoon.
The north-west has been identified as having significant shale gas and coal-bed methane fields and drilling has already begun, for example just over the border from my constituency in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). There are also live proposals for a coal-bed methane site in Trafford. There is deep local fear that fracking will start happening in our community, and there is a particular worry about fracking starting in Davyhulme where air quality standards are already being breached. It is a built-up area that is next to the M60 and close to an airport, and the site is right by the proposed biomass plant. There is, at the very least, real concern that the air quality will worsen substantially if there is fracking and exploratory drilling, not least because of the additional traffic flows, which the Secretary of State acknowledged was one of the unfortunate by-products of fracking exploration.
The core issue, however, is a lack of transparency and of genuinely honest and open dialogue with local communities about the implications for them. For example, it took the local press to reveal that radioactive waste water had been placed into the Manchester ship canal by United Utilities a couple of years ago. That waste water had been brought to our neighbourhood with the purpose of disposing of it. The public should have been informed about that, and if the view was that that was done entirely safely, that, too, should have been explained to local people. It does nothing for people’s confidence in new energy sources if we have such cover-ups.
Friends of the Earth reports that Trafford council failed properly to consider the climate change impacts and did not therefore require an environmental impact assessment for the IGas application for coal-bed methane testing and production at Davyhulme. Therefore, we have not had a full environmental impact assessment of the likely consequences of such activity. Moreover, the Environment Agency has allowed exploratory drilling at Barton Moss next door, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South. It seems to be quite untroubled by the fact that the IGas application to undertake such activity made it clear that it would be storing hazardous waste extracts on site. That is not covered by the Environment Agency permit, yet nothing appears to have been done to prevent it from carrying on with the activity. There needs to be more transparency and the regulatory regime needs to be much more effective if people are to have any confidence in this form of exploration. My constituents are very sceptical about whether they are being given all the facts.
Huw Irranca-Davies
My hon. Friend is making a very good contribution on hydraulic fracturing. Last year I visited Pau in southern France where for a couple of decades work has been carried out on carbon capture and storage underground. There is extensive seismic monitoring and monitoring of gas and so forth. It would be helpful if Ministers explained to us what long-term monitoring there would be of any sites where hydraulic fracturing is used.
Kate Green
I agree. There must be both the monitoring and the publication of the outcome of that monitoring and absolute openness and transparency about the impact.
My constituents are also anxious about the Government’s proposals to allow fracking companies to drill under people’s homes or properties without permission. I am pleased there is to be a consultation. The Secretary of State said this morning that there would be a full 12-week consultation on this, but I am puzzled as to where the Government are coming from because yesterday, in response to a question from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), the Prime Minister said it would not be legal to go on to someone’s property and frack against their will, but I am not sure I got such a firm assurance from the Secretary of State this morning.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) pointed out, the coal and water and sewerage industries already have a right of access to underground land. It is important to have clarity as to whether Ministers intend there to be a comparable right in relation to shale gas and if that is the case whether the costs of any damage and any clean-up and so forth will fall to the industry, not to the taxpayer or property owners. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) suggested, there is also significant concern about assessing baseline data in relation to, for example, seismic activity or methane in groundwater, and maintaining the monitoring of any impact on that baseline data as a result of any fracking activity.
Finally, there is significant worry about the long-term impact of investing substantially in further fossil fuel technology at the expense of renewables investment. We are very clear that any investment in fracking and other gas-based technologies must be accompanied by rigorous and tough adherence to decarbonisation targets. Ministers have not said much yet to explain why they are so enthusiastic about investing in a fuel source that can only increase our fossil fuel footprint, and which will not deliver much in the way of energy security for a good 10 to 15 years—time that could be used to develop alternative sources of energy. There is real concern about the climate impact being rather underplayed.
I think my constituents would prefer a greener energy strategy, and at the very least they deserve absolute openness about decisions to engage in the exploitation of coal-bed methane and shale gas. I echo calls made in this Chamber today for the Government to proceed with caution, and I very much hope they will be heeded.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). She touched on some of the issues I intend to speak to, although she may have come to slightly different conclusions from those I shall reach.
The No. 1 thing for this Government from their inception through to this Queen’s Speech has been the economy. There is no divide between economic growth and fairness and all the things that follow through from that, including the cost of living, which is the subject of this debate. It has been mentioned that we have cut the deficit, and we hope it will have been cut by half by the end of this Parliament, as has been forecast. That is not just some bean-counting exercise; it relates directly to mortgage payments, and it is therefore a cost of living issue as well as an economic issue.
A lot is said about Government debt, but far less is said about banking and household debt. Both of those are down from their high point under the last Government, and that is important. None of us wants to have to talk to our constituents about taxpayers bailing out banks again, and with interest rates likely to rise—and rightly so—in the relatively near future, it is very important that household debt comes down as well, so that those on tight, fine margins in respect of their mortgages do not feel the pinch too much.
We have recently become the fastest growing economy in the advanced world, and as a result unemployment has come down to 6.8%, as opposed to the 8% rate left by the last Government. The private sector has fuelled a huge amount of job creation. The media and also many in this Chamber talk about job creation and unemployment as if it were an economic priority, but the most economically and socially disfranchised in this country are the unemployed, and jobs creation is about dealing with them. This Government’s record in that regard is stellar: in just four years we have seen businesses create double the number of jobs that were created in the last decade under Labour. That is absolutely critical.
Inflation has been one of the issues eating away at the cost of living for many of our constituents, but again this Government’s record is very clear. The statistics do not lie: consumer prices index inflation now stands at 1.8% as against the 3.4% we inherited from the previous Government. The British Retail Consortium figures out just this week show that because of supermarket competition there has been a decline in non-food prices of 2.8% over the year. That is critically important, and annual food inflation stands at 0.7%, the lowest rate since 2006.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I just want to dig under some of the things the hon. Gentleman has been saying about debt. How, for example, would he make sense of the fact that, according to a recent report, the Bridgend county borough area, which covers two constituencies and contains a big manufacturing belt and areas of prosperity, has seen a tenfold increase in the number of people taking out payday loans at the end of the week to ease themselves over into the following week? In spite of all the good news that the hon. Gentleman is giving us, something worrying is happening.
Mr Raab
I am trying to look at the big picture, and the fact is that household debt has fallen from its 2009 peak of about 109% of GDP to around 10 percentage points lower. I am not suggesting that there are no issues relating to other subsets of household debt, such as credit and payday loans, but if the hon. Gentleman looks at the big picture and examines the raw data, he will see that the present situation represents a significant improvement on the one that his Government left behind. He is right to look at other micro-issues, and we must continue to do that, but let us not lose sight of the big picture.
When it comes to the big picture, we have to talk about housing. We could talk about stamp duty, as I am tempted to do, and about planning regulations and the relevant taxation, but the key issue is the supply of new homes. We need to do more on that front. I am sure that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government does not feel that he is on the back foot in this regard; I am simply urging everyone to look at the raw data. Hon. Members will be delighted to hear that, according to DCLG figures, the average annual number of affordable homes built under this coalition was 48,000, compared with 31,000 during the 13 years of the previous Government. That represents a 50% increase, and we should recognise the progress that we have made as well as talking about what else needs to be done.
We are talking about fairness in this debate on the cost of living, and we should also talk about inequality. The Leader of the Opposition is a wonkish sort—I mean that in the best possible way—and I am sure that he will be delighted to learn that the Gini coefficient shows that inequality is lower under this Government than it was under Labour. People talk about tax cuts for millionaires, but he will also be delighted to know that people earning between £10,000 and £15,000 are paying 54% less tax under this Government than they were in the last tax year under the previous Government, and that millionaires are paying 14% more. The idea that this Government are the enemy of the low-paid and the friend of the millionaire is therefore news to us.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I shall try not to be too wonkish. The recent Institute of Economic Affairs pamphlet on poverty argued that the best way to help the poor and to reduce inequality was to reduce the cost of those things that most disproportionately affected the spending of the poor—energy, food and housing. Given the hon. Gentleman’s argument, should he not therefore welcome Labour’s proposals?
Mr Raab
The hon. Lady’s interventions are always thoughtful, but I am not quite sure to which bits of Labour’s proposals she is referring. We can talk about the minimum wage and rent controls, but I fear that they would not have the impact that she desires, despite her best intentions. Some people on my side of the House think that raising the minimum wage would be a good thing, but I do not think that it would be the best thing to do for the most socially and economically disfranchised; nor do I think that rent controls are the right answer.
Ms Stuart
Rather unusually for a Labour MP, I am praying in aid the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has stated that it would be better to reduce energy and food costs than to increase benefits. I would have thought that that would be absolutely in line with the hon. Gentleman’s thinking.
Mr Raab
The hon. Lady is absolutely right; we share the same aspirations. Unfortunately, however, this is all about the means to achieving those ends. If we had wanted to do something about energy prices, we should not have closed down nuclear power stations, as happened under the last Government. We should be taking advantage of shale gas, as we propose in the Queen’s Speech. One area in which we can make common cause on the means as well as the ends is the need to reform the common agricultural policy, which puts £400 on the average family’s bills. The hon. Lady will recall, however, that Tony Blair rather meekly gave up on CAP reform as well as sacrificing the British rebate.
The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) mentioned regional impacts. The recovery is often described as London-centred, but this week’s figures from the Office for National Statistics show that gross disposable income per person has risen 4% in the north-east, which is higher than the UK average and considerably higher than the figure for London. The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), is also a wonkish type—again, I mean that in the best possible spirit—and if he and other hon. Members on both sides of the House look at the raw data, they will see that we have done a good job in relation not only to economic stewardship but to social fairness. I might even manage to get the shadow Secretary of State to agree that Thomas Piketty would have to accept that Britain is not just economically better off but fairer under the Tories. Let us see whether the right hon. Gentleman can bring himself to do that when he winds up the debate later.
We cannot rest on our laurels, however. There are important measures in the Queen’s Speech to strengthen the economy further and to curb the practice of public sector employees claiming redundancy and subsequently taking another job in the same sector. It is important that we get the public sector pay bill down, and that should be done in a way that targets the bureaucracy, the highly paid managers and the waste while protecting front-line services.
We are going to simplify the national insurance paid by the self-employed. I would like us to go further and cut employers’ national insurance contributions, because they can deter companies from hiring people as well as from paying better wages. I was delighted to read in The Times today—I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) will confirm this—that the No. 10 policy unit is considering raising the threshold for employees’ national insurance contributions. I have argued for that for a long time. If we really want to do something about low pay, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston does, raising the threshold for employees’ contributions is by far the clearest way of doing it. The Resolution Foundation, the Institute for Public Policy Research and all the left-wing think-tanks agree with me on that, and I am glad that the Government are looking seriously at that proposal.
I am delighted by the proposed reforms to speed up infrastructure projects and to allow fracking firms to run shale gas pipelines. I should like to comment on a couple of the points that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston made about shale gas. Ofgem has made it clear that our back-up energy stocks will fall to 2% by 2015. The chances of blackouts will increase from one in 47 years to one in 12 years. The previous Government allowed this stark energy crisis to creep up on us, and we must address it now. The renaissance in nuclear power will play an important role in achieving that; it will be good for meeting our energy demands and for decarbonisation.
We must also bear in mind our unique national comparative advantage in relation to shale gas. In 2013, the British Geological Survey—hardly a Thatcherite body by disposition—estimated that there were 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in the Bowland-Hodder basin alone. The reserves equate to 47 years of total UK gas consumption or 90 years of the UK’s North sea gas production. Of course, not all of it will be extracted, and it will take time to develop the right regulatory regime. That is important, but the opportunities over the medium term are immense. The Institute of Directors has estimated that shale gas could meet one third of UK gas demand and support 74,000 jobs, not to mention boosting manufacturing and helping us sustainably to rejuvenate the economy of the northern region.
I understand the concerns about fracking, but the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society—again, not Thatcherite bodies by any stretch of the imagination—have looked at the risks to aquifers and the risk of earthquakes and concluded that the risks are very, very low. They have concluded that, with a decent set of regulations, the process could be properly managed and monitored. Frankly, the spectres of polluted drinking water and of earthquakes have been massively exaggerated by ideologically driven activists. We ought to get cracking with fracking, and I am delighted that this Queen’s Speech will bring that about. It will also help us to wean ourselves off energy dependence on places such as the middle east and Russia; we need to consider that given the stability in those regions.
In this Queen’s Speech we also want to reward the great economic virtues of saving and grafting, both in the short term and over the long term. That is what our reforms to annuities are about. People will not in future be required to buy an annuity with their pension savings and they will be able to draw their retirement income in one go, if they so choose. If people save hard and do the right thing, we trust them. Our tax break for child care, worth up to £2,000 a year per child, is crucial to dealing with the cost of living. Many couples in our changing society are between them—both men and women—grappling with the balance of bread-winning and child caring. I have to declare an interest in the tax break for child care at this point, because No.2 in the Raab household will be on its way by the end of the year, and we will be delighted to take advantage of this new piece of legislation.
Finally, the European elections showed the level of the corrosion of public trust in the political class, and I welcome the introduction of a right of recall in the Queen’s Speech. I am very conscious of the debate that is being had in government and with parliamentarians such as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) about getting the right balance. We do not want something that is abusive, but we should not set up a right of recall and then torpedo it by allowing a committee of politicians to veto or vet it. I am sure we can strike the right balance to give the public greater trust in our political class, and I hope that as that Bill comes forward we can do so.
I am conscious of the time and know that others wish to speak, but I want to make one final point about immigration. It relates both to the economic pressures in this country and specifically to housing, which is the subject of today’s debate. The Government have already cut net immigration by a third; we have cracked down on bogus colleges, which sprouted up left, right and centre under the previous Government; and we have cracked down on the sham marriages and the abuse of the family route. A Bill will be going through this Parliament to strengthen immigration controls. I have argued passionately for us to strengthen some areas of that Bill, but I recognise the important steps that have already been taken. It is a bit rich if all the Labour Front-Bench team and the shadow Home Secretary can do is criticise the target of reducing net immigration to tens of thousands, given that her Government made it so difficult to accomplish that. It is a bit rich coming from the party of open-door immigration, which boasted in office that there is “no obvious” upper limit on immigration—that was said by a past Labour Home Secretary, whom I shall not name for fear of embarrassing him. It is a bit rich coming from the party that failed to impose transitional controls on immigration from the eight countries from central and eastern Europe in 2004.
I am no clearer today as to what positive agenda the Labour party is offering this country to take it forward. As Winston Churchill once said of the Soviet Union, Labour policy is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma; it has no clear vision, no serious policies and no credible leadership. The Government have a clear agenda, of fresh reforms cast against a Conservative vision of a more prosperous and fairer Britain grounded in sustainable public finances, and in the virtues of rewarding enterprise, hard graft and saving. I commend the Gracious Speech to the House.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
It gives me great pleasure to speak in the debate, and I seek to clarify some of Labour’s policies if we were to get into government next year. Some have actually been borrowed by the coalition Government, who have thought, “Yes, there is something in that. The public are interested in that.” However, they have produced a pale imitation of these things in their Queen’s Speech. Let me give some examples. Labour wants to tackle how people on low and middle incomes cope with rising costs. This year, for the first time, we have seen a reasonable rise in the national minimum wage, but that comes after three years of starving it and of costs going up by a far higher amount. We certainly welcome the measures to be tougher on employers who try to dodge paying the minimum wage, who try to make people work more hours than they were intending to or who try to make deductions from people’s pay. We would like more of such measures, but we have not seen many prosecutions. Time and again during questions Labour Members have asked what is happening about prosecuting people who are dodging the national minimum wage regulations. So, yes, let us get that legislation, but let us also get enforcement of it.
Andy McDonald
Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the delays we are experiencing in securing prosecutions are totally unacceptable? A case in my constituency has been rumbling on now for nearly a year and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs tells us that it will be a further two months before it is even looked at.
Nia Griffith
That is precisely the point: there is not much point having the legislation if it is not properly enforced and if people get the idea that they can get away with things.
There is no suggestion from those on the Government Benches of anything as strong as our idea that, to be effective, the national minimum wage needs to be linked to median earnings. We would like it to be gradually raised to 60% of median earnings. We are also keen to see people incentivised to pay the living wage. One of our proposals is to give employers a tax break if they bring all their employees’ pay up to the living wage. That proposal is affordable because of the savings we would make on tax credits and housing benefit. We should make it possible for people in full-time work to pay their way without an enormous number of top-ups from the state.
Again, the issue of zero-hours contracts is one that the coalition has picked up. We urgently need to deal with it and we need legislation on it. I am pleased that the Government are introducing a provision on exclusivity, which will deal with people who have to be available to work for only one employer. They do not know whether that employer will give them even an hour or two of work, but they cannot take up any other offer of work. However, a lot more could be done and we would like people to be offered proper contracts if they are working regularly over six months. Let us look at what the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers has done in some of the big supermarkets. The need for flexibility has been recognised, but things such as annualised contracts and averaging out hours are looked at so that people at least know that they will have a reasonable income over a number of weeks, rather than not knowing the situation from one minute to the next. Such contracts work both for the employee and the employer, as they give a sense of flexibility and of security. The real problem with zero-hours contracts is that not only are they unpredictable in terms of what someone gets from week to week, but they do not allow people any employment rights. I am sure that is one reason why some employers try to avoid issuing proper contracts. We would like people who are working regularly to be put on proper contracts.
Let me now turn my attention to the energy companies. Our suggestion of a price freeze has been well documented and we are seeing some ruffled feathers in the energy companies, but why can this coalition Government not help people by introducing that idea of a freeze much sooner? As we have clearly said, it is not just about having the freeze; it is about then breaking up the market so that it works properly for people, and there is proper competition and a proper opportunity to beat down prices. People are very angry about the profits. Yet again, we see high salaries and very high profits, but people’s energy bills are going up. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned, the only reason people managed to cope this winter was because it was so mild. If we have the sort of winters that we saw in the previous two years, people would find their bills astronomically higher, even given the coalition Government’s promise to take £50 off—although that amount has proved slightly elusive, in that it does not actually apply to everybody; the figure is up to £50. The more annoying thing is that we are paying for it through other means; in other words, other schemes that would have been financed by the Government have been scrapped, particularly the one to help with hard-to-heat homes. That is a double tragedy, because fuel bills will remain high and it is difficult to lower them in homes that are difficult to adapt. Ending that scheme, which means that more than 400,000 properties will not benefit from it, is a disaster both environmentally and, for the families concerned, economically.
With regard to the energy companies, we would like to have seen stiffer action much sooner. We have also said clearly that we would like much stronger powers for the regulator. We would also like to see powers extended to people suffering from off-grid issues, which are particularly acute in semi-rural areas, such as parts of Wales, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) mentioned. People there are reliant on the vagaries of oil deliveries or liquefied petroleum gas. They also have difficulty bargaining over price. Although some good work is being done, for example by oil clubs in my area, it is still very difficult to get the best possible deal. We would also like to have seen pensioners given the opportunity to receive their winter fuel allowance earlier in order to pay in advance and benefit from lower summer prices, rather than finding out halfway through the winter that they have bought only half of what they need and then having difficulties, both with price and delivery.
On fracking, there seems to be a bit of stampede, as if it is the be-all and end-all and the answer to all our energy needs. I am worried that there has been an overestimation of how easy fracking might be and how great the profits might be. I think that fracking will prove considerably more difficult in our country than it has been in the United States. When the Welsh Affairs Committee visited Lancashire to see what is happening there, I was struck by just how little we get from one well. It is like squeezing a tiny drop of something out of a stone. The hundreds of thousands of wells that would have to be sunk seem absolutely disproportionate to the amounts we would get.
The real question is this: why are we making such a huge effort to try to get something that we know is difficult to get—otherwise, we would have got it years ago—when really we should be trying to wean ourselves off fossil fuels altogether? We should be moving towards much greater investment in renewables. I am greatly disappointed that the Queen’s Speech included no mention of climate change or meeting our renewables targets. The renewables industry seems to have been left in limbo, whether it is wind energy being attacked or the Solar Trade Association, which is very worried about the current consultation. Will subsidies be reduced in the same way that feed-in tariffs have been? What is the situation with solar panels on rooftops? There is a lack of certainty, understanding and commitment to getting it right to ensure that we have the best possible uptake in the right places for solar energy.
Marine renewables also seem to have been pushed to one side and sadly neglected. Again, much more could be done to look at how subsidies work and to consider the opportunities to promote technologies that are more expensive and more difficult to develop, such as marine technologies, but that have such huge potential for our island.
As for the latest confusion about who can go on to whose land to undertake exploration for fracking sites, we need urgent clarification, because there seem to be conflicting stories. The Prime Minister has said, “No, nobody will be able to do that”, but that follows a letter to MPs from the Minister concerned stating that that is precisely what they are proposing. The situation is not clear and people have major concerns as a result.
Lastly, I want to deal with the major issue of housing. We all know how difficult it is, particularly for young people, to purchase a house or to afford rents. It is a struggle even in the less expensive parts of the country, where the ratios between what people earn and what houses cost are not good, but in London the disparity is enormous. London has very significant problems, and we need to look at them in a much wider context. Over the past few years, and particularly the past couple of months, we have seen the housing market in London grow away from the housing market in the rest of the UK, and at an even faster pace than it did before. That is leading to immense disparities in the cost of property, but it is also making London almost impossible to live in. If we add to that the fact that, because a huge amount of foreign direct investment—some 40%—tends to centre on London, we see that London seems to be growing in a way that is completely unsustainable. That is leading to huge problems with transport and housing, and people having to live further away and commute for even longer.
The question we must ask ourselves in the long run is this: do we need some far-reaching policies to redress the balance across the United Kingdom with regard to growth? I do not want to stop any regeneration programmes in London, which I think are vital for less well-off and more run-down areas, and I do not want to stop the people who are furthest from the work opportunities being given as much help as possible to access them, but we need to ask whether too many jobs are being created in London and not enough are being created elsewhere. When people think of the UK as a place to invest, they almost invariably think of London. Whereas if they think of Italy, they might think of Milan as much as Rome; if they think of Spain, they might think of Barcelona as much as Madrid; and if they think of Germany, they might think of Munich as much as Berlin. We have a huge concentration on London, and it is becoming absolutely unsustainable.
We need a strategy not only because it would help other areas of the United Kingdom, such as Wales, the north-west and the north-east, but because it would also help London and the south-east. We did that with public sector jobs a few years ago, when the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency was moved to Swansea and the passport office was moved to Newport, but we need to go further. I am sure that there are still some public sector jobs that could be moved out of London. But then we would have to consider whether we might create an imbalance between the public and private sectors, as we have seen in Northern Ireland.
We should also think about what motivates the private sector companies to base themselves in London so much of the time. We need proper studies of that and a real understanding of how we can ensure that in future London can be lived in. This is about not just helping other parts of the country but making London a place in which ordinary people can live and, at the moment, that is becoming more and more difficult. We must look at the pattern around the whole country, because we cannot make changes in a piecemeal way. Currently, we are seeing the development of a city region approach, especially in Manchester.
Like London, some places are experiencing a slight overheating compared with their surrounding areas. We need to find ways of linking in those towns that feel they have been left behind, because, as we saw in the recent elections, they are the areas that are the most disaffected and the most likely to turn away from the main political parties. We need to look at the way in which they are linked in to their regional capitals, or to the wealth-generating parts of their areas.
Our plan for the UK should be about creating the right transport links that take people from the places in which they live to the places in which there is work, and putting the work in the places in which people live. We need to think globally. We should think not just about what we will do this year and next, but about what we will do in the next 30 to 40 years. If we do not do that, we will be playing catch-up all the time.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) talked about needing 800,000 houses in the capital. That is a huge quantity. The Government are putting forward proposals for one new town, when in fact we need several new towns. We need to think about not only using every opportunity to improve the situation for people now and to build more affordable homes, but what we are going to do in the long term. How do we want the UK to look? We need to create a balance between where the work is, where the wealth is and where the transport is so that we get a much better balance across the country.
We should help those areas that have seen a decline in the more traditional industries and are struggling to attract some of the new industries as well as those areas that are over-heating, especially those in which young people and people on low incomes are struggling to live. Everyone would benefit from a much more strategic overview, and we should not be afraid of combining that with localism. That does not mean that we are against devolving funds to regions—we have announced that we would do that—or against promoting a municipal force, as was outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) when talking about Joseph Chamberlain. It is not about decrying that; that is extremely important. It is about linking a local strategy into an overall vision for the UK. In that way, we can begin to tackle as one the issues of housing, work and transport, and making that a strategy that we want to follow for the future. I will not suggest exactly what that strategy should be, because that needs to come from all the regions and the countries of the UK working together. They should look at how the strategy works as a whole, and not just at how it works for their region, country or part of the UK.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the considered speech of the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and the insightful comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). I congratulate the proposer and seconder of the Loyal Address, my hon. Friends the Members for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), on their excellent speeches yesterday.
The Queen’s Speech states that the aim of the Government is to strengthen the economy and to provide stability and security. Today we are debating, among other things, the cost of living, which is a matter of huge concern to all our constituents. That is why tackling the deficit is so important. In 2010, the deficit was at an unsustainable 11.8% of GDP. That should be compared with a maximum of 3% which, even in the eurozone, is seen as essential for long-term stability. The necessary measures that this Government have taken will, according to The Economist, reduce the deficit this year to 4.8% of GDP, which is still considerably higher than that 3% but a huge improvement none the less.
Unusually, I pay tribute to the Treasury for the efforts it has made in recovering tax from tax avoidance schemes. The amount of money coming in now has greatly increased on previous years, and that is a tribute to the work that the Chancellor and his team have done in bearing down on some of the ridiculous tax avoidance schemes that they inherited.
What would the consequences have been of not making such a reduction in the deficit? The Government would have had great difficulty in raising money on the markets and in financing borrowing. For the taxpayer, there would have been higher taxes to pay the increased borrowing charges. Let us not forget that we pay about as much interest at the moment as we spend on our entire school system, and soon it will be more. For home owners and businesses, it would have meant increased borrowing charges through higher interest rates. Tackling the deficit is therefore key and the first step in keeping the cost of living down. Any party serious about being in government has to state how it will do that and continue to bear down on the cost of living, because 4.8% is still far too high.
As earlier speakers have said, the Government have done much more to tackle the cost of living. First and most importantly, they have increased the number of jobs—or helped to increase them, because the Government themselves do not create many jobs; in fact, there are fewer people working in the public sector now than at the beginning of the Parliament. Nevertheless, the Government have created the conditions in which 1.7 million new jobs have been created, which goes to the core of addressing the cost of living crisis. They have increased the personal allowance to £10,000—it is to go up again next year—which helps to increase take-home pay and is important in tackling the crisis. They have also frozen fuel duty and supported councils to freeze council tax.
At this point, I add a note of warning about the Opposition policy of freezing energy prices. One consequence of such a freeze, as we have discovered with fuel duty and council tax, is that when we have done it once, people expect us to continue and continue with it. What happens after 20 months of frozen energy prices? What happens to that policy? Will people expect it to continue? Will they say, “You have done it for 20 months, and we need it to continue”? Council tax and fuel duty, however, are to some extent in the hands of Government—they are taxes—but energy prices are not wholly in our hands.
Julie Hilling
Perhaps I can answer the question for the hon. Gentleman. We will have reformed the energy market by that point, so we will have stopped the excess profit earned—or taken—by the energy companies. That is the plan; it is not only about the 20-month freeze, but about reforming the energy market.
Jeremy Lefroy
I understand that, and I think the energy markets need reform, but to expect that that will keep energy prices frozen, or at least at a stable level, when we are subject to world energy prices is to some extent pie in the sky. But we will see.
Julie Hilling
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Does he agree that when world prices go down, energy suppliers should reduce our bills, rather than putting them up? Fair enough, when the prices go up, we expect our bills to go up—but should we not expect them to go down as well?
Jeremy Lefroy
We would. In some cases, our bills have gone down, and in other cases energy companies are freezing them. Furthermore, through the ability to switch, which many people take advantage of, they can also cut their energy costs. All I am saying is that once we introduce a freeze, it is less easy than we might think to take the freeze away, because people will expect prices to remain the same, and we have been finding that with council tax and the fuel duty. It is essential that the Government look at every sustainable way to keep downward pressure on the cost of living for households.
I want to concentrate my remaining remarks on three areas, housing, health, and international affairs, which sadly have not been included as a subject for the Queen’s speech debate, although they were mentioned in the Gracious Speech itself. The Queen’s Speech talks about increasing the supply of housing, and we all agree that that is vital: we need to build more houses. The question is not simply one of numbers; it is also about the type of houses, where they are built and infrastructure.
With changing demographics, we need more housing suitable for older citizens, including extra care housing, of which I am glad to say that more is being built in my constituency. It also includes building small, energy-efficient, single-storey homes, which many of my constituents say that they would wish to move into, if possible, but there are simply not enough of those homes. I saw an excellent example of such a development, which must have been built 20 to 30 years ago, when for some reason I happened to be passing through Newark recently. Unfortunately, we do not see that sort of development now. Why? Because developers tell us that such homes are not profitable, because they take up too much land. That shows a lack of ambition and imagination. Such developments would encounter much less opposition, because they can be seen as fulfilling a real need and keeping communities together by enabling older people to stay in the communities in which they have lived for so long.
Where houses are built is, of course, a matter of great controversy, but it is exacerbated by the irresponsible submission by developers of planning applications that are quite clearly outside democratically agreed local development plans. That is certainly the case in my area. I urge the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whom I am glad to see in his place, strongly to resist such speculative developments, which fly in the face of properly agreed local plans.
Infrastructure is also a great concern. I worry that sometimes we look only at the narrow implications of development and perhaps suggest that problems can be addressed by, for instance, a controlled junction onto a new housing estate, rather than considering the wider knock-on effects of traffic across the whole area. In particular, once traffic lights are introduced, they are rarely removed or even modified to take account of subsequent development. We need to consider that. We tend to focus much too narrowly on the requirements of a specific development rather than those of the community as a whole.
I want briefly to speak about health. I have spoken on many occasions about the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and will continue to do so, both in order to speak up for my constituents and because I believe that what has been happening there is of national importance and has national implications. Medium-sized district general hospitals provide services that are prized by local communities. They often provide out-patient services and elective surgery, but they also provide general accident and emergency provision—not the most complex, but everyday provision—and consultant-led maternity services and paediatrics. For that to be provided and, of course, for safety reasons, there is a need for them to come together with the larger hospitals through networking, buddying or mergers, but such provision should be possible. That is why I fully support NHS England’s review of the possibility of continuing consultant-led maternity services at Stafford. I have also urged consideration of the possibility that urgent care could be available at night to supplement the 8 am to 10 pm A and E service that should be provided, although I believe that eventually a return to a 24/7 A and E will be necessary, especially given the housing developments taking place.
We are told that specialisation means that centralisation is inevitable. I disagree and I was very glad, after a conversation last week with Simon Stevens, the new head of NHS England, to find that he views district general hospitals and community hospitals as important in providing not just community services but acute services. I hope that he will succeed. Those of us who live and work in large towns and rural areas need a decent, truly national health service and not one that is increasingly sucked into the major cities.
Of course, there is the unpalatable issue of cost, and I shall not be afraid to address it in this place, as I have before. We will have to spend more on health, probably at least 2% of GDP. I have already suggested both in this place and in writing how we can do that, possibly by converting national insurance into a progressive national health insurance paid according to income and preserving an NHS free at the point of need. In my opinion, we must remove health from an increasingly sterile debate about taxation.
Finally, I want to touch on foreign affairs. I am proud to be a supporter of a coalition Government who have, with cross-party support, achieved spending of 0.7% on overseas development assistance. I am also proud to be a supporter of a Government who have introduced the Modern Slavery Bill, again with cross-party agreement.
Those things are vital, but I see four global challenges that we must confront. The first is to eradicate absolute poverty. The World Bank has set a target to get rid of it by 2030, and we as a country and a people need to do everything we can to support that. The second is to reduce income inequality. We have already spoken today about income inequality is in this country, and the World Bank has that we must concentrate on the 40% with the lowest incomes globally to reduce income inequality. I share that aspiration, as income inequality eventually leads to political instability and many other things.
Thirdly, there is climate change, which we cannot run away from and which any responsible Government must take fully into account in their policies. Fourthly, there is the whole matter of combating—not allowing—extremism. This relates to income and equality, but it is not just about income and equality as some of the most extreme people come from some of the most privileged backgrounds. We have to combat extremism everywhere and promote freedom of speech, thought and religion and the freedom to have no religion. That is the responsibility of this Government and this country. There is no magic solution to any of this, just constant, hard negotiation, peace making and engagement. We cannot do it on our own. We need to work with others to exercise our influence through the Commonwealth, the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and particularly the European Union.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I was fascinated yesterday when the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), began his remarks in response to the Gracious Speech. He sought to widen the debate from the usual Punch and Judy knockabout that goes on in this Chamber and the party political points. What was remarkable to me was the way in which, on the Government Benches, that was met initially with shock. That is the best way to describe it. There was silence and clear attention. After a few minutes my right hon. Friend’s speech achieved a response of baying, and things went downhill from there, but what he was trying to get across was fundamentally important.
Many of the speeches today have picked up on that theme and have handled sensitively the issues facing us as politicians in this Chamber about how people outside view politics, mistrust politicians and are concerned about how they feel that we in the Chamber have the capacity to influence events that are important in their lives.
I want to try to continue that theme today. I begin by isolating three elements. It is no longer the case, thank goodness, that the Gracious Speech is delivered in Norman French, as it used to be, but it struck me that there are three principles that France can still bring to our debates to elevate them. Those are liberté, égalité, fraternité. On the first—here I want to sound a note of welcome—Members in all parts of the House are delighted to see the modern slavery Bill being brought forward. I am sure it will be well supported by Members across the Chamber. That speaks to liberty, which is fundamental in any democracy. It is absolutely right that the Government are seeking to introduce that Bill and I hope that Opposition Members will give it fair wind before the next election—I am sure we will.
The next principle is égalité —equality. Here there are things that concern me and my constituents in Brent, who experience the second highest rate of low pay in London. Newham is the borough with the highest rate of low pay at 34%. In Brent 30% of people in employment earn below the living wage. That is of real concern to me because it means that 30% of my constituents look at the rest of society from a position of disadvantage and see the widening of the gap between where they are and where they perceive other people can legitimately aspire to reach. That is not good for society. Of course, it is not good for my constituents either. It means that they are struggling to put food on the table and to do right by their children and their wider family.
People are facing additional pressures because the local government settlement and the settlement put in place for clinical commissioning groups appear to be differentially disadvantaging communities like my own that are already more disadvantaged. Let us look at the funding for CCGs across the country. In Brent in north-west London, we have the highest incidence of tuberculosis and of diabetes in the United Kingdom, and yet £54.98 million is being taken from our CCG, NHS Brent, in this settlement. I looked down the list of all the other local CCGs to try to find a comparable figure, and thought I had—it was for NHS Coastal West Sussex CCG. The figure was £56.51 million, but when I looked again I noticed that there was no minus sign. I do not know what the particular health problems of people in coastal West Sussex are, but I am absolutely clear that their receiving a £56 million increase at a time when my constituents, in some of the most deprived wards in the capital, who have the highest levels of key diseases not just in the capital but in the country, are suffering a £54.98 million reduction does not speak to the principle of equality. I charge the Queen’s Speech with failing my constituents on that count.
I mentioned the local government settlement. The budget in my local authority is about £330 million—or was, I should say, because £104 million is being taken out of it. That is a cut of about 30%. My constituents, who rank second highest in London for lowest pay, are not just suffering in their wage packets. They are suffering because the services they would usually hope could pick up their families when they disintegrate, provide additional care for their elderly parents, and provide additional support from social services will not be there because local government is no longer able to provide them.
In the London borough of Brent we have just had the local elections. I am delighted to say that of the 63 council seats in Brent, of which my party used to have 41, we now have 56—a fantastic result. How quickly that will become bitter when those 56 enthusiastic, dynamic, determined people find that they are having to implement a 30% cut in services to the people they have aspired to represent and protect. That is what has happened to equality in this country. It is not just about low pay, although that is absolutely cancerous, or zero-hours contracts; it is also about the wider support that one used to be able to look to and expect to receive from one’s community but is no longer there.
Let us turn to fraternity. Another key missing ingredient from the Queen’s Speech was the issue of immigration. As my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee has said, there are key issues related to immigration that are about not race and ethnicity, but fairness. Nowhere is that more clear than in housing.
A mother in my borough who has been on the housing waiting list for 19 years came to me and said, “Mr Gardiner, when I first went on the housing list, I was told that, as a single young woman without any children I was not considered to be vulnerable and therefore I was not a priority. My daughter is now 18 and last month I was told that because she is now 18, I have no children and am not a priority. What’s going on?”
The point is that many boroughs allocate housing simply in accordance with need. Of course, medical and other needs such as overcrowding are important, but we do not understand that there are forms of entitlement other than need. The fact that someone who has been waiting for 19 years in their community—paying their dues, working hard, paying tax and being a good citizen—still does not have an entitlement to the security of a home is deeply corrosive of the principle of fraternity. It undermines social solidarity. That is the unfairness. It is similar to the unfairness in wages that immigration can bring in, because people come in and undercut wages. The principle is not one of race or ethnicity at all, but one whereby people say, “You are being unfair,” because the Government have a responsibility to ensure that people are being paid the minimum wage.
This Government have started doing that, but they need to do more, because the three principles of liberty, equality and fraternity must underpin our democracy. In this Queen’s Speech, they do not.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). I thought for a moment he was going to take us through the entire Napoleonic code, so we can be grateful that he did not do that. One part of the French example that I am sure Government Members would not want to follow is their exorbitantly high tax rate, which I understand has resulted in so many people leaving France that the Mayor of London is now Mayor of, in effect, the fourth largest French city. No doubt we can have regard to other aspects of French history.
I rise in support of the Queen’s Speech. Some on the left, and in the Labour party in particular, have mentioned the small number of legislative proposals, but I think that less, not more government is a good thing. State legislatures in some parts of the United States sit for only three or four months a year, and they manage to function in their societies perfectly adequately, with an executive, a judiciary and legislature, and get through their affairs without too many problems. Statist functionaries on the Labour Benches may well find it attractive just to produce Bill after Bill, but I do not find overweening Government attractive. There is the concept that less is sometimes more. Labour may of course find that difficult to understand, bearing in mind that we have seen more from Labour in all these areas—more debt, more of a deficit, more tax and more unemployment.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Less also means more time to get things right.
Michael Ellis
Yes, indeed, and careful consideration of measures is crucial. I practised law in the criminal justice system in Northampton for years before I entered the House, and I witnessed the criminal justice legislation repeatedly passed under the Blair Government and the subsequent Labour Government. Frankly, much of that legislation only served to grind to a halt the court process in England and Wales. It did not work, and in many cases it created further problems. It is important to get legislation right.
We want a Britain that pays its way in the world and a Britain that is more competitive. I wholeheartedly disagree with Labour Members who criticise concepts of profit and commercial endeavour. We want hard-working people and to give them peace of mind for the future, and this Queen’s Speech continues that series of policies. This Government have carried through such measures during the past four years, and will continue to do so for the next year.
For example, the deficit is down by a third. We still hear criticisms about how fast we are able to get down the deficit. As I have previously pointed out to the House, the reality is that for Labour to make such criticisms is rather like an arsonist criticising a firefighter for the time taken to put out a fire. The deficit is down by a third, and income tax has been cut for 25 million people by an average of more than £700.
Julie Hilling
The hon. Gentleman is praising the Government for reducing the deficit by a third—we are, of course, always pleased when the deficit reduces—but will he explain why they have not met their target of getting rid of the deficit over the term of this Parliament? I appreciate that the Parliament has a few more months to run, but it does not seem to me that they will hit the target of a 100% reduction.
Michael Ellis
I am pleased to hear noises from Labour Members about their wanting us to go faster in reducing the deficit. We are doing what we reasonably can, while adopting policies that will be fair across the board and across society, to make good the damage to the British economy that we inherited from the previous Labour Government. That is why we have created 1.5 million more jobs, which is an unprecedentedly large number of new jobs. They are quality jobs: in many cases, they are full-time jobs. I have heard Labour Members castigate such an achievement or try somehow to negate it by reference to the type of jobs created and the like, but these are new jobs that in many cases are giving people security and peace of mind. The huge volume of new jobs certainly beats the record of the previous Government and every Labour Government whom I can think of, going back generations. At the end of their term, unemployment was higher than the level they inherited.
Michael Ellis
I am told that that has always been the case under every Labour Government.
Julie Hilling
I really cannot let the hon. Gentleman get away with the outrageous statement that the previous Labour Government caused a global economic crash that started in America. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) may have been very powerful, but I do not believe that he caused the economic crash that started in America. Is the hon. Gentleman really trying to tell the House that the global economic crash was caused by my right hon. Friend?
Michael Ellis
The economy that this Government inherited was 20th out of the G20 leading industrialised nations. It was at the bottom of the heap. That was the responsibility of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), Tony Blair and the Labour party. That is the appalling legacy that we are seeking to improve.
Under this Government, there are 1.7 million more apprentices. We are looking to give people opportunities. Large numbers of apprenticeships have been created to do that. There are better standards and better schools for young people. Those are significant achievements of the past four years and the Queen’s Speech will follow through on them. Only by sticking to our plan will we secure a better and brighter future for Britain.
I accept, as the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) has pointed out, that there is more to do. That is why we seek another term. In my constituency of Northampton North, the rate of unemployment is 33% lower than it was in April 2010—the month before the general election. Youth unemployment is 41% lower than it was. However, there is more to do and the rate of unemployment is still too high. Like many colleagues on the Government Benches, I organise jobs fairs on an annual basis. During the last jobs fair that I organised, more than 2,000 people came through the doors and more than 40 companies were represented, including medium, small and large companies and charities. I accept that there is more to do, but we must stick to the long-term economic plan and get it right. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Prime Minister and all those on the Treasury Bench have been getting it right and we are seeing the results.
Her Majesty referred to the infrastructure Bill. Investing in infrastructure is a key part of the country’s long-term economic plan, because we have to think to the future, like the Victorians and many of our predecessors did. They thought of future generations. Stable long-term funding for the strategic road network is very important and is anticipated in the coming Session.
I have lobbied persistently—some might say nagged—on the issue of potholes. That might seem to many to be a micro-economic issue, but it is significant. In my constituency, and no doubt in other parts of the country, the issue of potholes is of serious and significant concern. I got together a petition to seek more assistance in that regard. I am happy to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in the Budget that he would allocate a further £200 million towards—
Michael Ellis
Not quite towards Northampton, sadly. We will find out in due course how much Northampton will get. However, I am very pleased that the Government have taken that move.
Motoring groups have welcomed that fund to fix roads, although, as ever, they wanted more. I, too, would like to see more money invested in our roads because the amount of road traffic only ever increases. There is an increasing number of incidents that are caused by poor quality road surfaces. Frankly, there are very human reasons why we need to fix the roads. They are dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians and other road users. The poor quality of our roads is a danger to life, as well as to livelihoods. The cost of compensation, insurance and the like is going up. That affects local taxpayers as well as national taxpayers. There are therefore raw economic reasons why we need to do something about potholes.
That is why I am very pleased that, thanks to the careful measures that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken over the past four years and to the fact that he has stuck to the path, sometimes in the face of a tsunami of criticism from the Labour Benches, he has improved the state of the economy to such an extent that he has been able to allocate £200 million to fixing potholes. Northamptonshire has bid for some of that, and I hope to hear relatively soon—as, no doubt, do other areas—how much my area will receive.
I think it right that local authorities bid for funding. As the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will know, some local authority areas perform much better than others and have a better track record of getting it right. It is only right that they show why they can operate more efficiently and successfully, or perhaps more expeditiously than others, and why they should therefore be rewarded for their endeavours and competence.
One measure not in the Gracious Speech is the Medical Innovation Bill, which Lord Maurice Saatchi introduced today as a private Member’s Bill in another place. It is to be hoped that in due course it might find its way to this honourable House. It is a completely non-partisan and highly important measure that is designed to make it easier for doctors to treat those who are suffering from cancer and other life-threatening conditions more successfully.
If passed by Parliament, the Bill will allow doctors to take a step away from the well-worn path currently followed in the treatment of cancer. For some cancers, the treatment has not changed literally for decades, and doctors—oncologists in particular—know that they will follow that path with their patient, and that there will be the same result at the end of that path. They can even particularise to quite a fine degree how long a patient may have left to live. With proper safeguards—I emphasise that—and with the fully informed consent of the patient and the extra safeguard of a multidisciplinary panel that can oversee the patient’s authority and what the doctor wishes to do, it is right that doctors ought to be able to diverge slightly from that path to see whether something slightly different can work. Only through those methods will we allow doctors to continue their good work and eventually find a cure for cancer.
Nia Griffith
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those who are suffering from multiple sclerosis and some cancers who have found that low-dose naltrexone can be effective will also benefit if that Bill is passed? At the moment, some GPs who are very much in favour of prescribing it are afraid to do so because of consequences under the present system if something were to go wrong.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Before the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) replies, may I point out that some Members have been sitting in the Chamber all afternoon? Five Members are waiting to speak and others have already spoken. The wind-ups will start at half past 4. We are running out of time and I hope we will be able to include everybody in the debate this afternoon.
Michael Ellis
I am coming to a conclusion, Madam Deputy Speaker. I agree with what the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, and many people will benefit from the Medical Innovation Bill. That is why I hope it will have cross-party support as and when it finds itself in this Chamber.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I regret that we are running out of time, as I mentioned, and it is my judgment that Members who have sat in the Chamber all afternoon would rather speak for a short amount of time than not at all. I therefore impose a time limit of seven minutes and I ask Members to work that out for themselves. Seven minutes for five speakers will comfortably get us to the wind-ups at 4.30 pm, but not if there are lots of interventions. It would be a shame not to hear all Members.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I am pleased to take part in this important debate. I am familiar with the refrain that you just issued to the Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will definitely stick within that time limit and hopefully my speech will be even shorter.
Let me return to the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in opening this debate on the Queen’s Speech yesterday, because he said something vital to this House, this Parliament, this Government and the country: that we in this House face a real challenge of relevance, legitimacy and standing in the eyes of the public. All Members from all parts of the House will have been out in their constituencies across the country, campaigning, knocking on doors and speaking to people in marketplaces, and so on, and that point will have come across crystal clear. The question is: how do we respond to that in the Queen’s Speech, the autumn statement and elsewhere in a way that makes sense to our constituents?
I want to focus on only one element—one that, sadly and tragically, is missing from this Queen’s Speech. For all the welcome news in the hard data in the claimant count analysis—including in my constituency, where the claimant count is down overall, although there is still a massive and enduring issue with long-term youth unemployment—for many people that is unfortunately not reflected in their satisfaction with being in work. The reasons behind that have not been referred to or engaged with by Government Members today, but that is the reality for many of my constituents.
The sad fact is that now, for the first time in the recorded history of this country, the majority of people defined as living in poverty are in work. Something is critically wrong with what we are doing. The fundamental question is whether or not we accept taxpayer-funded poverty pay where the Government—that is, the taxpayer—are asked to step in to prop up poverty wages. It is not all do with part-time work, zero-hours contracts, increased casualisation or agency workers; it is people in full-time work who cannot afford to feed their household, pay the rent, and so on.
I say simply to hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber that, with all the talk of rising employment, falling unemployment counts, and so on, if we do not deal with this fundamental issue, it will be a derogation of our duty as parliamentarians and also fly in the face of what we heard on the doorsteps, because it does not only affect our debates about welfare reform and how we create more jobs and good jobs; it also ties into those fundamental fears—fears of what people perceive and what the reality is—about immigration as well.
I have knocked on people’s doors, and the other day a woman in one household told me that she and her two children were both working full-time, yet their income was way below what they needed to live, not in opulence—not even taking two holidays a year, but one—but to do the basics of feeding their family and looking after each other. This also applies next door—these people are neighbours—where immigrant workers are living in multi-occupancy houses. They are on agency workers contracts and, because the national minimum wage, albeit pitiful as it currently is, is not adequately enforced, they are now being targeted by many who say, understandably in some ways, that it is their fault. Well, it is not their fault, and it is for us in this Parliament to do something about it: to protect the rights and conditions, the pay and earnings of everybody who works in this country.
I watched for six or seven minutes yesterday while the House was held rapt by the truth of what the leader of my party said in his opening remarks. It is worth putting them on the record once again:
“Fundamentally, too many people in our country feel that Britain does not work for them and has not done so for a long time—in the jobs they do and whether hard work is rewarded; in the prospects for their children and whether they will lead a better life than their parents, including whether they will be able to afford a home of their own; in the pressures that communities face; and above all whether the work and effort that people put in are reflected in their sharing fairly in the wealth of the country.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 15.]
This far into the 21st century I would say, not only to my own colleagues but to those on the Government Benches, that there is a point at which we have to make it clear that if we genuinely believe in dignity at work, that dignity has to be reflected in the way people are remunerated. We cannot do that overnight and we cannot do that if we are insensitive to small businesses, but we can do it with tax breaks to promote the living wage and by being serious about how we push up—over time, but more rapidly than we are—the national minimum wage. We can do it by dealing with the scourge of the abuse of agency workers. Too many agency workers are now in conditions where not only are they being recruited abroad, but they are being brought here and laid off after the 12-week period so that they do not receive the same protections as other people. We can do it not by completely ending zero-hours contracts, but by dealing with the abuse of them, where people who work regularly over a long time for an employer are not given the dignity and respect of being told, “You are doing a good job, we are going to keep you on. Here’s the contract.”
That is the sort of fundamental challenge we heard on the doorstep to the legitimacy and the reputational standing of this place. I ask Ministers to respond to that, because this Queen’s Speech simply did not.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who spoke yesterday in proposing the Loyal Address. She gave a glittering speech on the Navy, on Portsmouth, and on the role of women in Parliament and in the armed forces. It was touching, witty and profound. It was a speech that my great aunt, the first British Conservative woman in Parliament, would have been very proud to hear. It was a speech that should make us all redouble our work to smash the glass ceiling that still holds back so many women and girls in this country and around the world.
In the week of the D-day commemorations, I want to join my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, who rightly paid tribute to the D-day generation who gave their tomorrows for our today and our democratic freedoms. It is a salutary reminder, at a time when public disillusionment with politics is so high, making it fashionable for people such as Russell Brand and others to attack and dismiss mainstream politics, of the great privilege and prize of democratic politics: free and fair elections that those in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and other places in the world have fought and died for.
As the Leader of the Opposition said in the thoughtful first few minutes of his speech yesterday, highlighting the growing public disillusionment with narrow, shrill, unduly dogmatic and self-interested politics before disappointingly reverting to type and failing his own high test, recent elections have shown us the strong public groundswell of anger at a politics and a model of big government people increasingly feel is not working for them. The Queen’s Speech is about specific Bills, but it is also a moment to reflect on the causes and implications of that. With the Scottish and the EU referendums looming, there is a real risk of disillusionment fuelling support for secessionist, pessimistic, backward-looking politics and leading potentially to the break-up of this great United Kingdom and the loss of the irreplaceable richness and strength in the union of our historic nations, so brilliantly described recently by Simon Schama, to be replaced by a smaller, shriller, narrower politics of self-interest within the disempowering bureaucracy of a centralising European Union. That is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s strong support for the United Kingdom and his insistence on governing for the nation not in narrow party interest but from the progressive centre, ambitious for a globally competitive and influential Britain. But to do that we need to understand—indeed harness—the causes of the disillusionment that we are seeing.
I do not claim any special insight on this, but it is a subject that has long been of interest to me. In 2003 I founded an independent movement called Mind the Gap! to look at the causes of disillusionment and, in 2005, a campaign called Positive Politics. I have written and spoken on it widely elsewhere. I want to make three quick observations.
The first is that this problem has been incubating for a long time, over the last 20 years. The inconvenient truth that we need to face is that it has done so under both main parties; from some of the sleaze in the early ’90s, through the spin of new Labour and the culture of anything-goes irresponsibility. That was enhanced by the former Labour Business Secretary, who said that he was profoundly relaxed about people getting filthy rich. He should not have been; he should have been profoundly exercised in building a culture of enterprise, philanthropy and respect for wealth creation. There was also the abuse of the democratic process in connection with the Iraq decision, some of the scandalous excesses of the expenses scandal and the public disillusionment with the way in which the bank bail-out was conducted and the way in which bank bonuses continue to be paid without so much as any criminal sanction. In America, people would be behind bars. That has fuelled the sense among the public of “one rule for us and another for them.”
My second observation is that this is not apathy; the people of Britain are not uninterested in their politics. It is anger, fuelled by an increasingly depressed and devastating combination of powerlessness and a sense of an unaccountable governing class, particularly in Europe but also in London. There is a sense that the citizens of this country are less and less able to take power and influence over their own lives at a time when, in their domestic lives as consumers, technology is empowering them evermore.
The third observation is that the United Kingdom Independence party, while successfully riding this wave of anger, has no answers or solutions, no serious policy programme and is in fact a toxic and divisive influence in British politics. The British people are not lurching to the right. They do not necessarily want to leave the EU today and they certainly are not racist and xenophobic. But they do yearn for a politics and a Parliament in which those in positions of power and responsibility take and exercise their responsibilities for those who are without them. We must set the highest standards of conduct not just in public office but in senior positions across our society: football, the media and in business. We work always in the interests of the people whose Parliament this is, who pay our bills and whose ancestors gave their lives 70 years ago to secure the freedoms we cherish.
It is in that context that I welcome the important steps taken in this Parliament to begin to put this country back on its feet: restoring the public finances; tackling the deficit; rewarding work and responsibility; our reforms to welfare, to pensions and to tax breaks for the lowest paid; empowering citizens; our long-term economic plan for a resilient economy; the localist reforms to give power back to communities; the reforms in the Home Office, in defence, health and education; our historic commitment to begin to tackle the problem of public disillusionment with the EU with the Prime Minister’s pledge to reform and to give the British people a referendum on the EU.
In the Queen’s Speech, I welcome in particular the measures on the economy, society and politics; the recall Bill, the slavery Bill, the social action responsibility Bill and the small business and pensions Bills. The truth is that the extent of the economic, social and political hollowing-out that we inherited will take more than four or five years to fix. It will require a better politics, economy and society, which has at its heart, as this Queen’s Speech does, an insistence on the notion of the reciprocal responsibilities that bind us. It requires a culture of political discourse that values what the decent majority of British people do—a culture of fairness and decency with universal values and standards that apply equally to all citizens. I believe that this Parliament and this Government have started to put this country back on its feet through key reforms to promote work and responsibility, citizen empowerment, more responsive public services and a sustainable model of growth and public finance.
I welcome this Queen’s Speech as a first step on a long hard road. The Leader of the Opposition began yesterday to point the way down that road, but I do not believe that the public think he has a serious programme of reform to deliver what we need. I believe that the people of Newark today, and the country next spring, will reward the only party that does.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak in the debate. I wish that I could talk about the Gracious Speech, but in truth I do not believe there is very much to talk about, although I must say that I welcome the announcement of action on plastic bags.
My constituents cannot afford another year of complacency. They cannot afford another year of a Government who do not understand their situation and simply tinker at the edges. They cannot afford a year in which the Education Secretary proceeds with his plans to take our schools back to the 1950s, and in which the Government ignore the cost of living crisis faced by the people of Bolton West and do nothing to ensure that having a job means that people can afford to live, nothing to tackle the abuse of zero-hours contracts, nothing to address the widespread concerns about immigration, nothing to stop care workers being exploited, nothing to stop the privatisation of the national health service, the scandal of people being unable to see their GPs or the scandal of missed cancer and waiting-time targets, and nothing to freeze energy prices.
The Gracious Speech did not even include Bills that the Government have already produced in draft, such as the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill and the Bill to prevent smoking in cars. And what has happened to the legislation to regulate the taxi industry following the inquiry that the Government asked the Law Commission to undertake? Commentators have described this as a zombie Government, and I think that perhaps they have a good point. Government Members who spoke yesterday welcomed the next 11 months of lots and lots of general debates, but, much as I welcome the opportunity to discuss issues that are really important to the people of Bolton West, such debates are pointless if no action is taken to deal with those issues.
Members on the other side of the House talk proudly of the actions taken by their Government. They seem to think it is okay for there to be food banks in the fifth richest country in the world, and that it is okay to talk about jobs that are being created without any acknowledgement or understanding of the fact that they include unpaid jobs provided through Government schemes, jobs involving zero-hours contracts, jobs that have been transferred from the public sector, jobs that were created and then failed, and jobs in which people are self-employed. The fact that 30% of people who use the Atherton food bank in my constituency are in work provides evidence of the quality of some of those jobs. It shows that the quality of a job is important, rather than merely having a job.
Government Members make claims that they cannot back up with reliable evidence. Five million workers—one if five of us who are lucky enough to have a job—are paid less than the living wage. That is an increase of 400,000 in the last year alone. The situation is not just bad for those people, but bad for the rest of us. It costs the Exchequer £3.23 billion a year in in-work benefits and tax losses to support employers who do not pay their employees a living wage. Low pay is bad for the economy, and it is bad for the taxpayer as well. However, the Government have no plans to improve the national minimum wage.
One group of workers who are caught by both zero-hours contracts and abuses of the minimum wage are care workers. People who are doing one of the most precious jobs in our country, and whom we entrust to look after our elderly and disabled loved ones, are treated appallingly. Studies show that between 160,000 and 220,000 care workers are unlawfully paid less than the minimum wage.
Nia Griffith
When we talk about raising the minimum wage, we often hear scaremongering stories about jobs being offshored. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as care workers’ jobs cannot be offshored and will continue to be done here, there is no danger in raising their wages?
Julie Hilling
A great deal of nonsense is talked about raising the minimum wage. When we consider the cost to the people who are employed and the cost to the Exchequer, it is clear that we cannot continue to subsidise employers who could pay their employees a living wage.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is right to express concern about carers, many of whom are women. Would not many of them benefit the most from Labour’s commitment to provide extra child care assistance so that their children can be looked after, as opposed to the Government’s promise of jam tomorrow in autumn 2015?
Julie Hilling
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Most carers are women, and most of them are now older women because of that very problem that people cannot afford to pay for care.
An investigation of 80 care providers established that nearly half of them were not complying with minimum wage regulations. A fifth of the adult social care work force are on zero-hours contracts. Many are not paid for travel time, and, unsurprisingly, there is a 30% turnover of care workers who work in people’s homes. This is not just bad for them; it is also bad for the people they care for. Imagine a situation in which someone does not know who will come into their home four times a day to get them up, to feed them and to put them to bed, and who does not know who will be washing their most private parts. Imagine the strain of their having to tell different people every day how to care for them, the strain on carers when their cared-for person is unable to speak up for themselves, or the worry for people of not knowing when carers will turn up and the panic when they think they might have been forgotten.
Then there are the mistakes that occur. Members will know that I speak from experience. My mum was given both her morning and evening tablets at the same time the other day because the carer accidentally gave her her evening tablets and then thought it would be a good idea to give her her morning ones as well. Another carer just gave her her evening ones instead of her morning ones, and, even worse, a new carer took my mother for her shower, wrapped her in a towel and left her to walk alone from the bathroom to the bedroom with the towel wrapped around her, Of course, my mother fell and has a head injury, and an arm injury that is still troubling her now several weeks later. I speak from experience and I know that this is exactly what is happening to hundreds of thousands of people every day when they cannot rely on the care service. Imagine the distress, too, of a cared-for person, day in, day out, having a parade of different carers.
Low pay, insecure work and zero-hours contracts are not just bad for the employee; they are bad for all of us. I fear that yet again my words are falling on the deaf ears of those who simply want to tell us that everything in the world is fine. Well, it may be fine in their world, but it is not fine in the world of the majority of my constituents in Bolton West.
Simply telling my constituents that things are getting better does not solve the problem. This Gracious Speech does not solve the problem that a third of private rented homes are non-decent homes. It will not build the affordable homes or the social homes for people and their children. It will not provide secure tenancies or affordable child care or raise the national minimum wage. It will not guarantee a job for the long-term unemployed. It will not freeze energy prices. It will not stop workers being undercut by the unscrupulous use of migrant workers. It will not make it easier for people to see their GP. It will not stop the privatisation of the health service, and it will not tackle the issues of dog welfare and dog control that put my constituents at risk; and, worst of all, it is not going to make work pay.
I hope that in 12 months’ time I will be welcoming all the things that I said this Gracious Speech will not do, and that I will be sitting on the Government Benches welcoming the next Queen’s Speech. Truly Britain deserves better than this.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I greatly welcome the Queen’s Speech and the provisions set out in it. Having served on the Modern Slavery Joint Committee with Members of the House of Lords, I particularly welcome the Modern Slavery Bill. There is a long list of things I could welcome, but I want to focus on energy and housing as they are the topics for today. However, in passing I think I need to reply a little to the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), who spoke of the particular pressures that women, and perhaps women care workers, were under, by pointing out to her that 3 million people have been taken out of income tax by the raising of the tax threshold and that a large majority of them are women in low-paid jobs. I hope she will give us some credit for some of the good things we are doing.
Energy and housing are closely linked, because 27% of the carbon dioxide that is emitted in this country is produced from our housing stock. The link between energy, climate change and housing is very close indeed, therefore. I have long posed this question to those who give advice to Government and others: “If you’ve got £100 million to spend, what is the cheapest way of reducing carbon by the greatest amount?” The answer every time is to tackle housing. That is cheaper than paying for new generating equipment and cheaper than policies to cut carbon for transport, and it is certainly a longer-term solution than any gimcrack price fixing of energy policy.
I am delighted that we have doubled the amount of renewable energy which is contributing to electrical generation since 2010. I welcome our approach to generating energy, and I particularly welcome what we are doing to control energy and improve efficiency in housing. That has been a long-term interest of mine, and I steered on to the statute book the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004. I was very pleased that this coalition Government adopted the green deal, too. As a Minister I had the opportunity to sign through the first step forward in energy-efficiency for housing in October 2010, and I am pleased to see that there is going to be delivery on zero-carbon homes by 2016. The announcement is somewhat overdue. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is in his place and knows my views about that. It nearly happened in 2012 and again in 2013, but it has happened in 2014: we have a clear announcement about the commissioning of allowable solutions, and we can now get the industry making the preparations it needs, building the confidence to invest that it needs and making sure that it can really deliver for us in 2016.
In parallel with yesterday’s Queen Speech, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), made a written statement today on zero-carbon homes. I want to comment briefly on one aspect of that: what is described as a “small site exemption”. Perhaps the Secretary of State can give us a little more information on that. I remind him that there is no need to exclude small sites from the application of allowable solutions. We already have a system, very often played out through section 106, whereby if recreational facilities cannot be provided on site, a developer will contribute to a fund for those facilities to be provided elsewhere. That mostly applies to small sites, because they are the ones where a playground cannot be fitted in easily and so money is paid to enhance playgrounds nearby. He is going to be consulting on the small site exemption and I urge him to accept that my consultation number for the size of small sites should be zero homes and no bigger.
I wish to focus on one other aspect of energy policy as it affects housing efficiency, and it relates to clause 29 of the Deregulation Bill. Again, there is some history here. In 2003, the London borough of Merton won a High Court case allowing it to set energy standards for housing in its borough. That was strongly challenged by the then Labour Government and came at the same time as the Bill that became my 2004 Act was going through Parliament. I wrote into my Bill a clause that “legitimised” the Merton ruling, but the Labour Government and the local government Minister at the time took stock and decided that the embarrassment of challenging this sensible provision outweighed anything else. The Labour Government announced that they were not going to challenge the ruling, and the clause came out of my draft Bill, as it then was, and did not need to find its form in that legislation. I say to the Secretary of State that it was a good localism measure, predating the very good work he has put in place since 2010. I urge him to talk to his colleagues across government and persuade them that we do not need clause 29 of this new Bill, or that if we do, it should not come into force until zero-carbon homes are in place in 2016. Otherwise, we shall have a gap in the provision of energy performance for housing, which nobody wants and nobody needs. Let us be the greenest Government ever.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my indirect interest, as previously recorded in Hansard. We have had a wide-ranging debate that was opened by the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who made the Liberal Democrat case for the coalition. Were he here, I would gently point out to him that there has not been a council tax freeze for about 2.2 million people on the very lowest incomes who have been hit by the changes in council tax benefit. The most passionate part of his speech was when he talked about energy bills, but I would remind him that energy bills went down when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was Energy Secretary, whereas they have gone up during his tenure.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) then made what I think was a forensic speech, making the case for what could have been done in the Gracious Speech to do something about markets that do not work in the interests of consumers, which has dominated this afternoon’s debate. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) gave what I would describe as an hon. and learned master-class—one with which I was not familiar before—on heroic negligence. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government assures me across the Dispatch Box that he will further enlighten us on the subject when he replies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Communities and Local Government Committee, in a typically thoughtful and well-informed speech, made important points about brownfield land, viability, the impact of migration and the importance of devolving power to answer the English question—a point reinforced by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart).
Several Members—led by the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and supported by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), my hon. Friends the Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell)—spoke passionately in support of the Bill to tackle modern-day slavery. There is not a single Member of the House who does not look forward to the day when that Bill reaches the statute book.
We also heard contributions from the hon. Members for Angus (Mr Weir), for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), for Fareham (Mr Hoban), for North Dorset (Mr Walter), for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for Northampton North (Michael Ellis),
A number of Members, including the Chair of the Select Committee and my hon. Friends the Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), raised the problem of the insecurity and expense faced by the 9 million people who now rent from private landlords, including a growing number of families. We know that many of them would like to buy their own homes but cannot afford to do so and that private renting is the most expensive form of tenure. On average, people renting privately spend 41% of their income on housing. For those in the social rented sector the figure is 30%, and for owner-occupiers it is 19%.
We also know that renting privately can mean insecurity—the point made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. How can parents of children starting school this September, for example, feel confident about a stable future family life when, with 12-month tenancies being the norm—that is a fact—they do not know for sure whether they will still be in their family home a year from now? Landlords can tell their tenants, “Of course I will renew your tenancy, but I want to increase the rent by 10%.” How can a family plan their future finances, and have a sense of future stability, when there is that degree of uncertainty about both their tenancy and their rent?
We also know that very frequent turnover in properties is not very good for landlords, because properties lie empty and they lose out on rent during that period. It is not very good for tenants, as I have just explained. The one group of people it is good for, of course, is the letting agents, who can charge fees every time there is turnover, both to landlords and tenants. I think that the House will agree that the industry has been poorly regulated. Parts of it have developed some very bad habits, including charging hidden fees for having pets and dealing with inventories and references, all of which are on top of the large amounts of money that people have to find for rent in advance and for a deposit. Many people have to borrow to meet that bill in order to get a home, which is why we would stop lettings agents from charging fees to tenants—as is now the case in Scotland. After all, when we buy a house, it is the seller who pays the estate agent, and not the buyer; that is the parallel. I welcome what the Government propose to do in relation to transparency, but it does not tackle the root of the problem.
To be fair to Ministers for a moment—[Interruption.] I shall be fair; I am always fair. They claim to get the problem of insecurity and uncertainty in the private rented sector judging by the “Better tenancies for families in rental homes” document. It talks about longer tenancies to enable greater stability and rent review clauses that are index- linked to inflation, and yet when we recently announced that we would give greater security by offering three-year tenancies as the norm and peace of mind that any subsequent rent increases would not be excessive, what happened? The former Housing Minister, and now the Chairman of the Conservative party, instantly denounced them as Venezuelan-style rent control.
Then somebody in No. 10 Downing street suddenly thought, “Hang on a minute, didn’t we say something vaguely positive about this in that CLG document?” Lo and behold, the Prime Minister came to the Dispatch Box and said that he was in favour of longer-term tenancies. So, Venezuela, having hoved into view, then disappeared off the scene, but the Prime Minister denounced the idea of rent control.
Then something very curious happened. The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who is a Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, went on the “Daily Politics” show, and said
“on the rents issue, we put forward that policy at our conference last year.”
We have three different Members of the Government and three different positions, at least two of which fully support our policy. I say to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), if he is still in his place, what is really a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma is tenants wondering what the Government really think on this question of greater security for tenants. The only possible explanation, in the absence of any legislation in the Queen’s Speech to give people that security and greater certainty about rent increases in years two or three of what we have proposed in the three-year tenancies, is that the Government are willing to concede the point, but are unwilling to lift a single legislative finger to give tenants that greater security and peace of mind.
The only conclusion I can draw is that the Government are ideologically averse to the state using its power on behalf of those for whom markets do not work, and it is exactly the same issue in relation to the energy market. I simply say that it is not much use to all those tenants who find themselves in that position. It is the difference between us and the Government. We will give tenants greater security as of right, and the Government will not.
On building the homes that we need, I welcome the proposal in the Gracious Speech for an urban development corporation to support the building of the Ebbsfleet garden city. However, I say to the Secretary of State that the statement from his Planning Minister, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), that he would not require a particular level of affordable housing in Ebbsfleet—he said that in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) in the House recently—is frankly astonishing. Are Ministers saying that in all the garden cities that all of us from all parts of the House want to see built, there will be no requirement for affordable housing? What will that do to the housing benefit bill given that there has been a staggering 60% increase in the number of working people claiming housing benefit since the coalition took office? As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, we are talking about 400,000 more people. If that does not reinforce the point that was made yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that for many people in this country work does not seem to pay or reward them, then what does?
My hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and for Brent North all spoke eloquently in their own way about the effects of insecurity and low pay on people’s sense that they lack liberty and equality, and on how as a result they do not feel a sense of fraternity in our society.
We want to see the details of the housing and planning measures announced in the Gracious Speech, but after four years of announcements and headlines, the truth is that the Government’s record is not much to shout about. Four years in, the number of homes completed has been lower in every single year that the Secretary of State has occupied his post than it was in any of the 13 years of the previous Labour Government. We built more homes than the coalition. The number of social homes completed last year was the lowest for at least 20 years—the Government’s own figures. That is not surprising. Why? The first act of the Secretary of State on housing was to say, “I have a good idea. Let’s cut the capital budget for affordable housing by 60%”—surprise, surprise, the lowest figure for at least 20 years.
Far from having the “self-build revolution” promised by the then Housing Minister, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps)—he said that the Government would double the size of the sector—the number of self-built homes is at its lowest level for 30 years. For people who want to get a foot on the housing ladder, it now takes a lot longer to save for a deposit, but even when they get to that point, they find that house prices are now rising nationally at 8% a year and in London at 17% a year. No wonder that the Governor of the Bank of England recently said that Britain’s housing market has deep structural problems and that the failure to build enough homes and rising house prices are the biggest risks to financial stability.
As I have said before from the Dispatch Box to the Secretary of State, we support help for people to realise their dream of home ownership, especially first-time buyers. But, if the Government simply increase housing demand without increasing housing supply, which they have not, all that happens—and indeed it is happening—is that prices continue to rise out of the reach of people who want to get their foot on the ladder. That is what is missing from the Queen’s Speech—a recognition of the structural problems in the land market and the house building market.
Much of the focus has been on planning, and there is more to come, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) pointed out, there is planning permission for 20,000 homes in her borough, but I think she said that fewer than 1,000 of them—
Hilary Benn
Only 500 of those homes have been built. The problem is not the planning permission, because more than 19,000 houses with planning permission are waiting to be built; they are simply not being built. What is the structural problem? In part, it is because 30 or 40 years ago two thirds of houses in this country were built by small and medium-sized builders, but by 2012 that figure had fallen to a third. That is a profound change in the structure of the house building market. As the number of small builders has declined and as the big firms have grown even bigger, it has become easier for the dominant firms to buy up land. As Kate Barker found in her report 10 years ago—many Members know that this is true—it is not always in the interests of those big builders to build out the sites on which they have got planning permission as quickly as possible or as quickly as the nation needs.
The truth is that to get the number of houses we require to be built, there has to be a change in how the housing market works—something that Ministers have simply failed to acknowledge. We have to get more firms into house building to build homes and to provide competition, because the high cost of housing is driven by the high cost of land. That is why, compared with the rest of Europe, we have really expensive homes with really small rooms in this country. Not enough land has been released for housing development and, by the time land is given planning permission, it is often prohibitively expensive. That creates an incentive to bank land rather than to build on it.
Those who argue that land banking is not a problem forget what the Office of Fair Trading found in 2008. It said that strategic land banks bought with options, which accounted for 83% of land banks, were worth 14.3 years of production, and that that would be enough to build 1.4 million homes, which would be a welcome addition. What is more, under the current system there is very little that local authorities can do about land banking. Compulsory purchase order powers are little used because they are complex, legalistic, difficult and so on, so authorities, on behalf of the communities that they represent, have no effective way of bringing land forward to the market. That is why we would create greater transparency by ensuring that developers register the land they own and have options on—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is chuntering, but he is in favour of transparency, so will he support that measure?
We want to give councils and communities the power to charge developers escalating fees for sitting on land with planning permission to incentivise them to build and, if they do not, to release the land. The Secretary of State has denounced the idea, but of course it was supported by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford before he was given the job of Planning Minister. As a last resort, we would give local authorities the power compulsorily to purchase land and to assemble land so that we could make progress. The purpose of all those measures is to address the imbalance of power between local communities and developers. I say to Ministers that the land market and the housing market are not working and that is why there is this fundamental problem. There is not enough competition and I do not understand why a Government that includes a party that prides itself on being an apostle for competition is doing nothing about that.
My final point is about how we can get consent and get the houses built in the right place. I congratulate the local authority of the hon. Member for Fareham on the leadership it has shown—he outlined that for the House this afternoon—in recognising that there is a need for more housing and saying where it would like it to go. That is the essence of the deal. We have a much better chance of getting communities to come forward and take responsibility for meeting housing need in their area if they think that the sites they identify are where the housing will go. As we have heard in debates in this House on many occasions over the past two or three years—this is the reason the Planning Minister sometimes gets a tough time—it does not work like that. Developers say that the land is brownfield and too expensive, that they cannot build a lot there and that they want to go for a greenfield site. That has to change.
The fundamental problem with the Gracious Speech is that it does not get why so many people voted the way they did or did not vote at all on 22 May. It does not get the costs and insecurity that many people have to live with, whether they are caused by zero-hours contracts, the bedroom tax, high energy bills, insecure tenancies, unaffordable house prices or having to go to a complete stranger and say, “Can you help me because I can’t feed my family this weekend?” That is the truth. The Government are unwilling to use the power of this House to help people in those circumstances. In the end, the public will judge, but if we want to restore faith in democracy we must use our democracy to help people who find themselves in that position.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
It would be churlish of me not to thank the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) for allowing me a few moments to reply to the debate. I always enjoy following him and thought that he was particularly on form today. I always look forward to his unique combination of Lady Bracknell and Joseph Stalin.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers—and, of course, sisters—are here to debate the Queen’s Speech, while our comrades in arms are 100 or so miles to the north marching the streets of Newark. I want to make it absolutely clear that if anybody in Newark is watching this debate on the parliamentary channel and has not been to vote yet, I would not be offended if they left immediately to do so.
Many people have spoken in the debate and, although I think it is quite unusual to do so the following day, I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) on an excellent speech. We all enjoyed it and never did I believe for a moment when we were putting through the Localism Act 2011 that it would eventually lead to a namesake of mine snuffling through the undergrowth of my hon. Friend’s constituency. I wish that mammal every success.
As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central said, apart from the wonderful speeches from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), the speeches started with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) talking about heroic negligence. He is a distinguished lawyer, which I know to be a fact, because when my permanent secretary was the chief executive of a local authority, he tried to sue me for defamation and my hon. and learned Friend managed to save my house and my skin. I realise that he was teasing me terribly. I have looked and I can find no reference to heroic negligence. I am taking my courage in my hands to contradict a distinguished QC. As far as I can see, this is just a defence to a charge of negligence, where one can say one has done something in the common interest and shown unnecessary valour. That does not involve, as far as I can see, disappearing into a phone box and changing into an outfit where one wears one’s knickers over one’s shirt. I think we may be able to satisfy my hon. and learned Friend.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and other right hon. and hon. Members referred to the modern slavery Bill, as did my hon. and learned Friend. We are pleased with the support for the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip mentioned that he had been to the 105th birthday of Sir Nicholas Winton, who is widely known in the House. It is appropriate that on this day, when we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe, we remember that Sir Nicholas was responsible for the liberation of many young people in the Kindertransport, and we wish him many more birthdays to come.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) welcomed the help for small businesses and spoke cogently about the problems of small businesses getting finance from the banks. He spoke also about a problem in his constituency, which I have shared. It is right that we are addressing that problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) said that it was massively important that we were bringing down the deficit and ensuring that personal and banking debt were reduced. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) spoke about the Government’s many achievements and the excellent quality of housing in her constituency, which I had an opportunity to see recently.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) talked about the way we are dealing with the housing market, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) spoke about solar power and was a strong advocate of local power. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) talked about recovering tax from tax avoidance schemes and what we were doing to deal with the deficit. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) managed to elicit from Labour that they wanted to out-Thatcher Thatcherites by going faster and deeper with the cuts, which I thought was amazingly interesting. He also spoke about the new jobs and better standards in schools, and talked interestingly about potholes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) gave strong support to the Union and made a persuasive case for turning the anger of the electorate into empowering the electorate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) talked about improving energy in building. I cannot look at a copy of the building regulations without thinking of him. The measures on small sites are not there to help the larger developers; they are to help small builders. As Opposition Members tried their best to bankrupt the housing sector, we are trying to get some builders back in.
We have heard a lot in this debate, but one thing is clear: an economy under the Opposition would mean an economy in reverse, a stifled rental market, a choked-off energy market, and an overtaxed labour market. In fact, it would be a miracle if any market was going in the right direction.
This Government have spent four years laying the foundation for a sure recovery by cutting Labour’s budget deficit, sticking to our long-term economic plan, and keeping taxes down for hard-working people. The Opposition may say that some grand Whitehall housing targets would make the difference, but we have heard that before from the previous Prime Minister. As soon as they were announced, with the curse of Jonah, the house-building programme plummeted under Labour. We have reversed Labour’s shameful housing market trend, which dragged us down to 1920s start levels. We have begun work on more than 445,000 houses since 2010. Planning permissions for 213,000 homes were put in place only last year. The Help to Buy equity loan scheme has helped more than 30,000 people to buy or reserve a new home—something I understand the Opposition now support. Home ownership is no longer a pipe dream but a reality for thousands of first-time buyers.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
A contribution in my constituency will be the local plan that my two local authorities are working on. One of the difficulties is the green belt, which is very precious to them. The current Planning Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), and his immediate predecessor have emphasised that these sites could be removed from the green belt only in exceptional circumstances and that doing so in order to make up the housing site numbers was not exceptional. Unfortunately, some councils—I will not name them—are not heeding that advice, and apparently neither are some planning inspectors. Assuming that my right hon. Friend agrees with the Minister, would he be able to circulate this important message to local authorities as they develop their plans?
Mr Pickles
Yes, indeed. We did that, I think, as recently as a couple of months ago. An exceptional case has to be made for housing on green belt. We know from the Solihull case that an exceptional case has to be made not only in terms of taking things off the green belt but putting things on to it.
The Opposition claim that there are half a million unbuilt houses with planning permission due to land banking; indeed, we have just heard that. I have to say that that is not entirely correct. Some 90% of those houses are currently in the process of being built or are about to be started. Our reforms on planning conditions in the infrastructure Bill will help to speed up the process. We have taken a series of steps to kick-start stalled sites, such as scaling back unreasonable section 106 agreements—all measures that the Opposition have opposed.
This Government have turned Britain around. We are safeguarding the public finances, there are 1.5 million more people in work, income tax has been reduced for 24 million people, and the deficit is down by a third. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) wants to intervene, he should stand up and ask. [Interruption.] I will not give way at the moment.
This is the sort of decisive action that the Opposition can only dream of. Labour Members talk about the cost of living crisis and claim to understand it, but they failed to protect hard-working people when they had a chance. Instead, they doubled council tax, escalated fuel duty, and watched as building sites downed tools and shops were boarded up. In contrast, this Government are protecting people who want to get on and do the right thing by putting taxpayers at the heart of decision making.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his advice on standing up. In standing up for my constituents, may I ask him to address the nub of my speech? The fall in the claimant count in my constituency, despite continuing long-term problems and long-term unemployment, is welcome news, but underneath that is the issue of poverty pay. Does he accept the situation under this Government whereby more people are in poverty and in work than in poverty and out of work? Is that acceptable?
Mr Pickles
We have been very clear that we want an increase in the minimum wage and want to do things to prosecute employers who do not pay it. We want to see people on the ladder. We do not take the Labour view: “You know your place and you’ll never get any better.” We believe that once people get on the employment ladder they will get a better job, move on and get promoted, and then reach a point when they want to put something back into society. There is nothing wrong with the dignity of labour.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. Going back to planning regulation, will he reconsider the question of the lack of planning requirement for the transfer of office accommodation into housing? When a transfer takes place there is no social housing obligation. Does he not realise that it is quite an important issue in areas such as mine?
Mr Pickles
It is exactly the same as it is for housing in the rest of the country. We found that placing those numbers created an unnecessary burden nationally. We are happy for local people to come to an agreement on the mix and some minor adjustments have certainly helped, but building 50% of nothing is still nothing.
I can announce today that we will introduce new measures to allow London home owners to rent out their homes on a short-term basis to visitors. Londoners currently have to apply for planning permission from their council, with extra red tape, confusion and cost. Ending that outdated rule from the 1970s will allow Londoners the same freedom that home owners across the rest of the country enjoy. It will not mean that homes will be turned into hotels or hostels, but it will allow hard-working families to earn extra cash when they themselves go away. In our fifth parliamentary year, this Queen’s Speech builds on the foundations we have laid.
The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), who is not in his place, expressed concern about new homes in Wales. I understand why, because the number of new homes in Labour-run Wales has fallen. House builders have shifted their business across the border to England, because the Welsh Government are so anti-business. The devolved Administration in Wales have hit the housing market with a mountain of red tape and have failed to support home ownership. Some builders have estimated that it costs up to £13,000 more to build a house in Wales than in England. It is a matter of public policy and the regulations hurt business and jobs.
Members do not need to take my word for that, because the Federation of Master Builders has stated that the Welsh Government’s waste plan is “counter-productive” and is
“going to drive the industry further into the doldrums”.
The Home Builders Federation has warned that the cost and regulation of building seem to be increasing:
“For example, proposed change to Part L of building regulations on energy and carbon efficiency could potentially add nearly £20,000 to the build cost of each new home in Wales.”
That is not satisfactory.
Labour Front Benchers will forgive me for saying that two Labour Back Benchers made immensely interesting speeches. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) spoke powerfully about Birmingham and Joseph Chamberlain. I cannot help believing that he would have laughed his socks off at her contribution and the idea that he would stand around and wait for the Government to grant some powers. He took the powers and I think that frightened this Chamber enormously and led to a lot of the regulations that pushed down on local government. I think that the general power of competence and the city deals are the future, and local government should grab that opportunity.
In the remaining minutes, I just want to say that the speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) really reflected the massive importance of housing in any social change. The changes we are attempting to make to get more private money into the private rented sector are about trying to build more resilience. Whether the hon. Gentleman sits on the Opposition or Government Benches, the truth is that there will be no public money for a massive house-building programme. We can only do that by making it attractive for private money to come into the private rented sector. That was our concern about the proposals made by the hon. Gentleman a few weeks ago. My point is that they gave uncertainty in suggesting that they might be a harbinger of Venezuelan rent controls.
I commend the Queen’s Speech to the House.
Kidnapped Nigerian school girls
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
The petition was organised by the pupils of Sugar Hill primary school in Newton Aycliffe in Sedgefield in my constituency, where they managed to collect 212 signatures.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Sedgefield,
Declares that 200 Nigerian school girls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram and further that the Petitioners believe that more could be done internationally to ensure their safe release.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the UK government to do all in its power to ensure that the 200 kidnapped school girls are released and returned to their families.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001356]
Planning (Shipley)
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I am very grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate, and for rescheduling it so promptly after it was postponed because of Prorogation. I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will pass on my thanks to him.
I am grateful to the Minister for being here to respond, although I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), is disappointed not to be in his place today.
I am in favour of localism, but I want the Minister to be aware that, for my constituents in Shipley, localism is only a pipedream and a concept that they do not experience. For them, localism is not working, and I hope that he will reflect on their experience and look at what can be done to ensure that it works for everyone.
The Shipley constituency is served, if that is the right word, by City of Bradford metropolitan district council. The Bradford district has a rising population, so the council wishes to build more homes. The rising population is actually in the centre of Bradford, but to boost its house building numbers, the council is seeking to build as many houses as possible in the outskirts of the district. The planning permission granted by Bradford council for more than 300 houses in Menston—I want to focus on that—will not do anything at all to alleviate the housing demand in the centre of Bradford. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of people who come to live in Menston are from outside the district.
Bradford council also wishes to regenerate the city centre, which is much needed. However, people who live in places such as Menston in my constituency go to Leeds rather than to Bradford to do their shopping. This housing numbers game will therefore do nothing to alleviate the housing needs of the district or to regenerate the city centre; yet it will ruin the nature of the villages in my constituency. What is the sense of this approach, and what will the Government do to ensure that councils have plans that meet their strategic objectives and do not just treat the whole district as a large numbers game?
There is clearly far more demand for housing than supply. That is why all political parties are anxious to outbid each other on how many new houses they will build. However, in a situation of supply and demand, there should be just as much focus on demand as on supply. The reason why there is so much demand for housing is largely immigration, particularly the unlimited immigration from the EU caused by our open borders, which means that we cannot control the numbers who come into this country.
The public would much prefer the supply and demand of housing to be solved by controlling demand—by controlling immigration—than by simply concentrating on supply, which will eventually lead to every green field being built on? The only sustainable position is to control demand, and I hope that the Government will reflect on that rather than indulge in an unsustainable house building arms race.
There are many examples in my constituency of Labour-run Bradford council, which only seems to care about its Bradford political heartlands, riding roughshod over the wishes of local residents. For example, the planning application for Sty lane in Micklethwaite has been valiantly opposed by local residents through the Greenhill action group and local Bingley councillors. It is a wholly unsuitable site for development and, eventually, the council’s planning committee rejected the planning application—a decision that has been upheld by the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State. However, the developers keep coming back with new planning applications. According to the developers, that is with the encouragement of council planning officers. I would like to place on record the thanks of my constituents to the Secretary of State for twice rejecting the planning application. I hope he will continue to do so should it ever come back to him.
Planning permission has also been granted by Bradford council for Buck lane in Baildon and Crack lane in Wilsden—both wholly unsuitable sites—in the teeth of opposition from local residents and local councillors. However, there is no better example of how Bradford council has failed local communities in my constituency than the planning permission that has been granted for more than 300 houses on Bingley road and Derry hill in Menston. I want the Minister to be aware that that raises matters not just of local concern, but of serious national concern that the Government need to address urgently.
In discussing the planning matters in Menston, I want to begin by paying tribute to the whole community, who have come together to fight the planning applications and have done all they can to protect their village. There are too many people to mention by name, but Menston action group, the Menston community association, the parish council and the district councillors for the ward have all worked their socks off to prevent these wholly inappropriate developments from taking place. There was even a referendum in Menston, which saw 98.4% of people vote against the development on a turnout of more than 50%. Surely the fact that Bradford council granted permission for the development, despite the opposition from all those community groups and leaders, and the referendum, shows perfectly that localism is not working as it should. The matter has been time-consuming and has brought a considerable financial cost for local residents, who have raised more than £140,000 to take on the council, which has dipped into public funds to, in the words of locals, “legally stifle resident representation”.
The planning applications for Menston have been treated in the most cack-handed way it is possible to imagine by Bradford council. The process has been littered with errors in process. The regulatory committee of the council did not even bother to get off the bus when it visited the site before making its decision. That is no way to deal with planning applications that will have such a huge impact on the local community. I have been left with the impression that, for the council, these planning applications have simply become a battle of wills. It is determined that housing will be built on the sites, irrespective of what evidence comes to light.
That leads me to the main point that I want the Minister to address and take away with him. It relates to the issue of flooding and the lack of experience—certainly at local authority level, but also at other agencies, including the Environment Agency and even Yorkshire Water—in assessing the flood risk in planning applications. Everyone will remember the communities that were flooded earlier this year, especially in Somerset, and the devastation that was caused. One of the most prominent cases outside Somerset was at Bridge, which is near Canterbury in Kent. The footage of the floods clearly demonstrated the power of water bubbling incessantly up through the ground—something that I have discussed with my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier). When people think of houses being flooded, they think of heavy rain causing rivers to rise and overflow, thereby flooding the land, but I want the Minister to focus on the flooding that arises when water comes up through the ground, as at Bridge, after heavy rainfall, because that is a huge issue and the one on which the lack of expertise is most acute in the assessment of planning applications.
Although I said that there are too many local residents in Menston to whom I would like to pay tribute to name, I must mention Professor Rhodes. He is a distinguished scientist and business man, who has spent a great deal of time and money on commissioning experts to look at the flood risk at the sites. His most recent project used a supercomputer and the best software available to provide simulations of the area to check the viability of the land for development. From that, he has absolute proof that building on the proposed sites is not viable. He fed that information back to Bradford council just before Easter, but has received, in his words, “zero feedback to date”. It is deeply regrettable—indeed, it is a total and utter disgrace—that Bradford council has not taken that independent expert opinion into account. Indeed, it has not shown any interest in it at all, and I urge the Minister to do what he can, even at this late stage, to make the council reflect on that evidence because otherwise a flawed decision will have been made. Even without such evidence, I have photos of the land that is to be developed which show that it is flooded after heavy rainfall, yet that real-life proof of the problem seems unable to move the stubborn planners on Bradford council.
The groundwater in Menston is due to water-carrying bedrock sandstone layers falling away from Ilkley moor towards Menston, and that type of emergence of groundwater was a major issue in Kent and parts of Somerset. A British Geological Survey map clearly shows that parts of the Shipley constituency have a high susceptibility to groundwater flooding. Indeed, it shows that at Bingley road and Derry hill in Menston, possibly 50% of the site is classified as being at very high risk of flooding. I draw that to the Minister’s attention, and press him to hold a public inquiry into those groundwater emergent issues and the lack of technical ability to interpret those conditions which now affect such a large proportion of the country.
I am not an expert in planning or in groundwater emergence, but I am a firm believer that such issues should be left to experts. Unfortunately, it seems that Bradford council does not hold the same view. A report by JBA Consulting, which is
“a leading environmental and engineering consultancy undertaking work to enhance the built and natural environment”,
stated that the flood risk assessment done by developers on the sites failed to take into account the following points. The first is the evidence of unusually high local run-off rates. The run-off rates used in the flood risk assessment were predicted by standard flood estimations, but volume 1 of the Environment Agency’s “Flood Estimation Handbook” clearly states that evidence of high local run-off rates and past flooding should be taken into account when establishing flood flow. Residents have provided evidence of that in the form of video clips and pictures, yet it was not taken into consideration when deciding the application.
The second point concerns diversions of exiting watercourses and flow paths. Diverting the water could lead to flooding downstream, and developing that site creates the possibility that we could endanger someone else’s home. To me that is irresponsible decision making with potentially devastating consequences for other local residents. The developers also did not take into account catchment areas by proposed new swales. Again, the proposed swales would lead to flooding downstream, but it is clear that nobody except local residents is interested in that.
The final point that was not taken into account is that parts of the development site are on a floodplain. Photographic evidence shows that the high run-off from the hill would cross the lower part of the proposed development site, and in the words of JBA
“this part of the development site should be considered to be floodplain and therefore not suitable for development”.
The report suggested that that development site would widen the catchment of the watercourse by 27%, meaning that properties already built downstream would be affected by any significant flooding. If that were not enough, an appraisal report commissioned by Sirius Geoenvironmental stated:
“This site is...located within an area in which groundwater flooding may be a significant issue.”
It went on to say that after inspection it had located a number of seasonal springs that discharged across the site. That was seconded in separate guidelines by the British Geological Survey, which suggested that when high groundwater flooding is indicated, groundwater flooding hazards should be considered
“'in all land-use planning decisions.”
Unfortunately, neither of those expert bodies are allowed to comment on any proposed development, which in my opinion makes no sense. Such bodies are specifically established to research those areas in depth, so why would we not take into account their professional, expert opinion? The Environment Agency recommended that the major flooding event captured in the flood risk assessment of September 2012 be simulated to determine how proposed developments would have coped. If that had been done, the modelling would not have shown the formation of the lake, thus proving that the modelling is fundamentally flawed and that 10 times more water passes across the site. Neither that recommendation nor the flooding reports with the information I have presented today was provided by Bradford council to the Regulatory and Appeals Committee in April 2013. Residents were denied the opportunity to present their expert evidence to the independent inspector, and the public inquiry that followed was closed before it even opened.
Rules stipulate that there is only a small window of opportunity for residents to oppose a planning application. This clearly leads to an imbalance in representations between developers and objectors. There is frequent input by developers throughout the process, but no further challenge is allowed by local residents. I hope the Minister agrees that the process should be evened out, so that each side in a planning application is given equal time to present their cases.
Let me conclude by reiterating that flooding due to groundwater emergence is now of national importance and needs to be addressed—not just for my constituents in Shipley, but for the thousands who lost their homes in the floods earlier this year and the thousands who believe that homes should be safe and secure from flooding and should certainly not be built on a site in danger of flooding or groundwater emergence. I find it ludicrous that a number of specialist organisations cannot offer an opinion in the planning decision, especially when the issue is as important as flooding in the home. Will the Minister agree to a full, independent inquiry into the flooding issues that I have raised?
Finally, planning departments have a duty of care when making their decisions, and it is clear that Bradford council is not acting in the best interests of the public it is supposed to be serving. In the words of Sam Jordison and Dan Kieran, in their book “Crap Towns Returns”:
“A once fine and confident Victorian City has been brought to its knees by years of incompetent planning and failed developer-driven attempts at ‘regeneration’”.
I hope the Minister takes seriously the points that I have raised. I am interested to know what he can do to help my local residents in Menston, who have fought so valiantly against this completely unjustifiable development and found that the expert evidence they obtained has taken them absolutely nowhere. What will the Government do to ensure that decisions are taken on all the available evidence, so that we do not have such flawed decisions and we prevent these flooding problems from happening in other communities around the country?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on securing—or, from what he said, re-securing—this debate. I am sure his constituents have been paying attention to the powerful case he made on their behalf. I am not sure what they would have made of his reference to “Crap Towns”. I have picked up that book several times on visits to Waterstones or Foyles in my constituency, but have never been tempted to buy it. You will be relieved, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I was, that Bristol has never featured in a book with such a title.
This debate underlines the importance of getting up-to-date plans in place as the best way of determining what development is appropriate and where it takes place, and of addressing flooding appropriately through planning. I hope my hon. Friend appreciates that, because Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government have a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, I cannot comment on the particular proposals he mentioned, in Menston, Micklethwaite and Baildon, or on proposals in Bradford’s emerging local plan. None the less, he raised many important issues that I hope I can address by outlining the Government’s general approach and the reforms that we have made.
In all our reforms, this Government have put plans and communities at the heart of the planning system. The national planning policy framework states at paragraph 150:
“Local Plans are the key to delivering sustainable development that reflects the vision and aspirations of local communities. Planning decisions must be taken in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.”
An up-to-date local plan, prepared through extensive public engagement, sets the framework in which decisions are taken, whether locally by the planning authority or on appeal. All areas should have some form of development plan, but where these plans are old, the policies they contain may become less relevant with the passage of time. I note, as I am sure my hon. Friend does, that Bradford metropolitan district council’s existing development plan dates from 2005, but I welcome its publication of a version of the new local plan for public comment earlier this year. I am sure he is feeding through his concerns on behalf of his constituents to that emerging local plan.
On 6 March, the Department published significantly streamlined planning guidance that reiterated the importance of local and neighbourhood plans. It made it clear that plans must be kept up to date regularly in the light of changing circumstances in a clear and transparent way. Our policy is clear that emerging local and neighbourhood plans may carry some weight in planning decisions before they are formally adopted. The weight accorded to emerging plans will be determined in respect of the specific circumstances of the case, the plan’s stage of preparation, the extent to which there are unresolved objections and the degree of consistency of that plan with national policy.
National policy is clear that it is the purpose of planning to enable sustainable development, not any development. Localism, to which my hon. Friend referred several times, means choosing how best to meet development needs, not whether to meet them. That is why the NPPF also states:
“local planning authorities should use their evidence base to ensure that their Local Plan meets the full, objectively assessed needs for market and affordable housing in the housing market area, as far as is consistent with the policies set out in this Framework.”
I should make it clear that most of the need for new housing, according to information that the Government recognise, arises from all our constituents living longer and from decreasing household size—the number of people who live on their own—rather than migration, which my hon. Friend made out was the case, a case I have heard him make several times. It is the longevity of the whole of the population that is largely driving the need for ever more housing units to be built.
Local authorities should identify and update annually a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to provide five years’ worth of housing against their housing requirements. Where they cannot do so, relevant policies should not be considered up to date and the presumption in favour of sustainable development would therefore apply. The presumption in favour of sustainable development means granting planning permission unless the adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits or specific policies in the national framework that indicate that development should be restricted. These specific policies include building on the green belt or in areas where there are designated heritage assets and flooding, which my hon. Friend is particularly concerned about in his constituency. Therefore, even in the absence of an up-to-date plan, our policy strikes a careful balance between enabling sustainable development, and conserving and enhancing our natural and historic environment.
Before coming on to flooding, I will mention briefly the safeguards on the green belt, as this is relevant to Bradford and the historic environment too, which my hon. Friend mentioned in perhaps a not very flattering way right at the end of his speech. Our planning policy sets out how the Government attach great importance to the green belt. It explains how most development in the green belt is inappropriate and should be granted permission only in very special circumstances, and that green belt boundaries should be reviewed only in exceptional circumstances through the local plan process. National policy equally sets out how planning must take account of the different roles and character of different areas, recognise the intrinsic character and beauty of the countryside, and take into account all the benefits of the best and most versatile agricultural land.
In respect of the historic environment, local planning authorities should set out in their local plan a positive strategy for the conservation and enjoyment of the historic environment. In doing so, they should recognise that heritage assets are an irreplaceable resource and that they should conserve them in a manner appropriate to their significance. The Government’s policy is absolutely clear that all development should be supported by appropriate infrastructure, and local authorities have a range of ways to ensure that this occurs. Legislation also prescribes the specific bodies that local authorities must engage with in plan making, which include utilities providers. Compliance with the procedural requirements and consistency with national policy will be thoroughly tested at local plan examination.
My hon. Friend raised issues relating to flooding. He highlighted the importance of ensuring that homes should be safe and secure from all sources of flooding. There are strict tests in national planning policy to protect people and property from flooding, including from the groundwater flooding that my hon. Friend said was a particular risk identified by the experts he cited. Managing the impact of flooding has been brought into sharp focus by recent weather, and it is quite right that attention should be paid to how councils plan for new development.
Following the floods of last winter, we have worked across Government with councils in some of the worst affected areas to understand the impact of those floods. The evidence that we have seen suggests that our policy is working. My hon. Friend should also be reassured to know that 99% of proposed new residential units that the Environment Agency objected to on flood risk grounds were decided in line with the agency’s advice, where the decisions are known. We have been very clear that we expect councils to follow the strict tests in national policy, and that where these tests are not met, that new development should not be allowed.
The main tests to be followed, in summary, are designed to ensure that if there are better sites in terms of flood risk, or a proposed development cannot be made safe, it should not be permitted. The framework is also very clear that residential development should not be allowed in functional floodplain where flood water has to flow or be stored.
The risk of groundwater flooding—to which my hon. Friend referred—is considered alongside other sources of flooding. National policy requires the local plan to direct development away from areas at risk through the sequential approach. This means that councils must first look to locate development outside areas at risk of all sources of flooding. Where appropriate sites at low risk are not available, and sites at a higher risk need to be considered, a site specific flood risk assessment has to be undertaken to demonstrate that development will be safe and resilient—for instance, through flood defence or raised ground floor levels. That should not increase flood risk elsewhere.
Philip Davies
Briefly, I and my local residents want to know what they can do and what the Government will do. It is all right saying what should happen but when a flawed decision is made by a local authority that does not have the expertise to understand the ramifications of the decision—or which is flagrantly ignoring the expert advice—what can my local residents do to make sure that that flawed decision is not implemented? What are the Government going to do to make sure that local authorities do not pursue those flawed decisions?
Stephen Williams
I was careful to say at the outset that I cannot comment on specific applications to which my hon. Friend has referred, but general advice from Ministers is that where there are concerns about particular planning applications or decisions, he should use all the relevant provisions that are in place. Judicial review may be appropriate, and he is exercising his own important constitutional right on behalf of his constituents to raise the issue in this place and to draw attention to what has happened. If a decision has been made and all the processes have been exhausted, I am not sure whether there are any further measures that can be undertaken.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend’s advice in terms of judicial review is helpful but, as he will appreciate, that is a very expensive process. What financial support can be given to local communities to pursue a judicial review when such a travesty of justice has taken place?
Stephen Williams
Judicial review is of course a last resort. We want the democratic processes to work, but my hon. Friend is always able to write formally to the Department where Ministers will act in accordance with advice from officials or from the Planning Inspectorate and advise what other appropriate action could be taken. I urge him to do that if he has not already done so. He indicated earlier that the Secretary of State has already been involved to an extent in decisions in the borough, but I urge him to write in with the concerns to which he has drawn attention in this debate.
A local plan is informed by a strategic flood risk assessment, which includes an assessment of risk from all sources of flooding including groundwater. A strategic flood risk assessment will draw on a range of sources of information. I understand that the assessment for Bradford was updated earlier this year and that it considers flooding from all sources, including groundwater. I suggest that my hon. Friend write specifically to me at the Department so that we can have another look at the issues that he has raised.
The decision whether to grant planning permission is a matter for local planning authorities, taking into account their own local plans, strategic and site-specific flood risk assessments as appropriate, advice from the Environment Agency and from leading local flood authorities, and other material considerations. Those bodies have an opportunity to comment on draft local plans and various types of planning applications where there is a risk of flooding. Bradford has now published its local plan, and I suggest to my hon. Friend that while it is at its current emerging stage, he should make his representations loud and clear to ensure that flooding is taken into account appropriately.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Open Government Partnership Summit
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The UK Government hosted the open government partnership (OGP) annual summit on 31 October to 1 November 2013. The summit marked the end of the UK’s chairmanship of the OGP and brought over 1,500 people together to: learn from each other; reflect on the OGP’s achievements to date; set ambitious new commitments for greater openness and demonstrate that open government tangibly improves the lives of citizens. The ambition was to bring together as many Government and civil society reformers as possible from across the OGP network, as well as business leaders, journalists and bloggers and representatives from international organisations—in the end we welcomed over 1,500 participants from 83 Governments and civil society organisations around the world. The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster was hired as sufficiently large enough to accommodate a varied and innovative agenda and it offered the flexibility to operate different kinds of sessions simultaneously. The venue was well equipped for our security needs, as Heads of Government were invited from a number of countries. It also provided the facilities needed for translation services.
The summit was co-ordinated by the Cabinet Office with involvement from the Foreign Office, the Department for International Development, the OGP support unit and other interested civil society representatives. The event production company WRG was hired to run the event logistics, which included managing the venue and on-site media operation, producing delegate materials and liaising with speakers. Foreign Office embassies were involved in engaging the participation of 82 overseas Governments in the event, and their lobbying efforts helped to secure the announcement of new commitments on openness from 37 Governments at the summit.
Due to a number of high-profile Ministers being in attendance, the Metropolitan police provided security and special protection for VIPs. Further questions about the police operation should be directed to the Metropolitan police. A pre-summit reception and dinner was held for 300 guests in Lancaster house on 30 October, and a reception sponsored by the World Bank was held for all delegates in the summit venue on 31 October.
It was important for the event to engage the widest possible audience. It was live streamed online and video content from each session was subsequently uploaded to the OGP website and YouTube channel. Live streaming enabled individuals around the world to participate remotely, including the US Secretary of State John Kerry who took part in one of the plenary sessions via video link. The venue housed a media centre for press conferences and to enable key participants to be interviewed. Interpreters provided simultaneous translation of the main plenary session in addition to some breakout sessions in French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. Broadcast, print, online and social media meant we were able to reach millions of people around the world who did not attend the summit. This considerable external interest in the summit was evidenced by the fact that it was placed second on the BBC news website and that #OGP13 was trending on Twitter in the UK.
The emphasis on peer learning in the OGP led to the development of an exhibition of 60 innovative projects from across the globe that had either developed to facilitate or as a consequence of open government initiatives. The aim of the festival was to provide participants with the opportunity to learn how to make progress on open government, explore the work of others, create new ideas, solutions or services and encourage networking.
The central funding for the event came from the Cabinet Office, supported by funding for the pre-summit reception from the Foreign Office. We agreed a budget of £1.6 million for the summit but every effort was made to balance the need to deliver a powerful event engaging the widest possible audience with the need to reduce costs. As a result the actual amount spent was significantly less, at under £1.3 million. In-house resources were used as much as possible and delegates were required to cover their own costs to attend. The Cabinet Office did not provide any travel support to delegates, and instead a travel support fund was co-ordinated by the OGP support unit. The Cabinet Office furthermore secured sponsorship from Omidyar Network for live streaming costs and the World Bank for the main reception on 31 October.
Below is a breakdown of the summit costs:
Open Government Partnership Summit Budget* | |
|---|---|
Pre-production | £249,715 |
Satellite | £11,900 |
Production | £434,938 |
Venue hire | £139,434 |
Hospitality | £171,647 |
Protocol and associated costs | £61,607 |
Staff costs (non-salary) | £1,565 |
Welcome reception and dinner | £12,370 |
Police costs | £170,000 |
VAT | £32,075 |
Total summit cost | £1,285,251 |
State of the Estate in 2013
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I have today laid before Parliament, pursuant to section 86 of the Climate Change Act 2008, “State of the Estate in 2013”. This report provides an assessment of the efficiency and sustainability of the Government’s civil estate and records the progress that Government are making. The report is published on an annual basis.
Debt Management Office
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Nicky Morgan)
The United Kingdom Debt Management Office (DMO) has today published its business plan for the year 2014-15. Copies have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses and are available on the DMO’s website, www.dmo.gov.uk
Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Baroness Stowell of Beston, has made the following written ministerial statement:
I am today announcing key performance targets have been agreed for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre for the period 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015.
The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre is an Executive agency of the Department with trading fund status. It has proved to be a highly effective trading fund over many years, and has met its key financial target and returned a significant dividend to HM Treasury in every year but one since it was established as a trading fund in 1997. All of its costs are paid for by revenue from room bookings, catering and other income. It does not receive any financial support from the Department. As such, it represents excellent value for the taxpayer.
The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre is also part of the Government’s national emergency contingency planning.
The centre’s principal financial target for 2014-15 is to achieve a minimum dividend payment to the Department for Communities and Local Government of £1.5 million as proposed in the centre’s business plan for the year.
The centre also has the following targets to achieve:
Room hire—To achieve a capacity utilisation ratio of 49%.
To generate secondary revenue from audio visual and IT services and catering royalty which in total equates to a ratio of 90% of room hire revenue.
To achieve an overall score for client satisfaction of at least 90%.
To receive less than two complaints per 100 events held.
Prorogation Recess (Department's Work)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
I would like to update hon. Members on the main items of business undertaken by my Department since the House rose for the prorogation of Parliament and since the start of the new Session.
Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech
The Queen’s Speech is a further step in the coalition Government’s long-term economic plan to secure the recovery for our country. We want a Britain that pays its way in the world, has a stronger, more competitive economy and gives hard-working people peace of mind for the future.
Measures in the Infrastructure Bill related to the work of this Department would:
Enable surplus and redundant public sector land and property to be sold more quickly by cutting red tape around such sales, increasing the amount of brownfield land available for new homes;
End unreasonable and excessive delays on projects which already have been granted planning permission, by a new “deemed discharge” provision on planning conditions; this will help speed up house building;
Modernise and digitise the Land Registry, improving services and aiming to reduce costs to end users, helping speed up the home buying process;
Create a framework to give house builders cost-effective offsite opportunities to meet the zero carbon homes standard; and
Improve the nationally significant infrastructure regime by making a number of technical administrative improvements to the Planning Act 2008 following a review of how the Act has operated.
In addition, the Deregulation Bill, which has been carried over, will include the following measures that would cut red tape and scale back bureaucratic restrictions; it will:
Further extend the right to buy, by reducing the eligibility period that a social tenant has to have to qualify for the right to buy and the right to acquire from five years to three years, bringing home ownership closer for approximately 275,000 households;
Reform outdated rules from the 1970s preventing London residents from renting their homes on a short-term basis to visitors, assisting the take-up of innovative internet sites such as airbnb and onefinestay.
Scrap the Labour Government’s unfair bin fines, which penalised families for not following complex and arbitrary bin rules;
Remove top-down, prescriptive requirements on local authorities to consult and produce various unnecessary strategies, giving them more freedom from Whitehall micro-management in line with the coalition Government’s ongoing localism agenda.
In addition, a measure in the Consumer Rights Bill will ensure full transparency on letting agents fees, closing off the opportunity for a small minority of rogue agents to impose unreasonable, hidden charges. This common sense approach avoids excessive state regulation which would push up rents for tenants.
Getting Britain building
The Queen’s Speech reaffirmed the coalition Government’s commitment to further increase housing supply and home ownership.
House building—On 15 May, my Department published house building figures for the latest quarter showing housing starts are 11% up on the previous quarter and a third higher than the same time last year. House building by councils is now at a 23-year high; more new council housing was built in London last year than in all the 13 years of the last Labour Government combined.
Help to Buy—Help to Buy is opening up home ownership to thousands and supporting the long-term plan to help hardworking people secure a better future for their families. Private house building has increased by 34% since the launch of the Help to Buy scheme in April 2013 and overall, housing starts are now at the highest level since 2007. On 29 May, official figures for the Help to Buy equity loan and mortgage guarantee schemes showed that 27,861 households have been helped by the scheme. It continues to overwhelmingly benefit first-time buyers, with the vast majority of sales outside of London and at prices well below the national average. Help to Buy is directly helping to increase housing supply, with the scheme driving demand and supply of new-build homes. Almost three quarters (74%) of homes bought through both Help to Buy schemes are new-build properties.
Affordable housing—On 30 May, my Department announced that 13 housing associations will receive a share of £208 million in Government guaranteed loans to build affordable homes across the country. In total, 26 borrowers have now been approved for loans that will enable 5,900 homes to be built. The agreement forms part of the affordable housing guarantees scheme, delivered by Affordable Housing Finance, part of the Housing Finance Corporation. Through the scheme, the Government use their strong economic record from tackling Labour’s deficit to guarantee and unlock up to £3.5 billion of cheaper debt for Affordable Housing Finance, enabling it to lend this on to housing associations to build new homes to rent for hard-working people.
Decent Homes—On 28 May, my Department announced a deal that could see council tenants in Salford benefit from up to £75 million investment in their homes. We have given the green light to Salford city council to transfer ownership of its social homes to Salix Homes, a non-profit company, by writing off the council’s £65 million historic housing debt. In exchange, Salix Homes made a commitment to invest £75 million to ensure all 8,500 properties will reach the Government’s Decent Homes standard by 2020.
Self-Build—On 3 May, I attended the Grand Designs Live event for custom build week. Self-build and custom-build offer an important alternative in providing greener, more affordable and more innovatively designed homes. Our £150 million budget boost to self-builders will help turn these visions into bricks and mortar. The right to build scheme will provide the solid foundation for more self-build, unlocking council and other land as a right, rather than a request, to help self-builders secure their desired plot. Self-builders are also exempt from the community infrastructure levy, saving them on average £15,000 for a four-bed property; we intend to follow this through by making similar changes to offer relief on section 106 tariffs imposed on self-build.
Promoting Community Rights
On 26 May, my Department paid tribute to the communities that have used their new powers to protect around 1,200 local assets including pubs, parks, libraries, sports grounds and theatres from sell-off across England. The coalition Government have taken action to give local communities new rights to help shape how local public services are run and planning decisions are made. Local residents can put forward a community asset to their council to have it listed as a protected asset and, if approved, this gives a six-month window for the community to put in a bid to buy it should it be put up for sale.
Boosting local growth and jobs through Enterprise Zones
Enterprise zones are part of our long-term economic plan to secure a better future for people right across the country. Enterprise zones are a major global investment opportunity. Many of the 24 zones are already home to world-leading businesses and as their reputation grows they are attracting even more new interest from investors over the world. Since their start three years ago. Enterprise zones have created over 9,000 jobs, attracted over 300 businesses and secured £1.2 billion of private sector investment.
On 28 May, my Department announced that £23 million of essential infrastructure investment will help bring more jobs to Bristol, Manchester, Great Yarmouth and Leicestershire. The infrastructure investment will fund:
Bristol Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone—awarded £6 million for commercial development in and around the new city centre;
MIRA Technology Park Enterprise Zone—awarded £7.4 million for the construction of a new spine and distribution roads with a roundabout to increase access to the Hinckley site;
Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Enterprise Zone—awarded £3 million to deliver 5,700 square metres of speculative office and industrial units, as well as road and utilities for Beacon Park, Great Yarmouth;
Manchester Enterprise Zone—awarded £6 million to open up key sites to attract companies in the healthcare and medical technology sectors.
On 3 June, I met with Chinese business leaders as part of a drive to attract further international investment to the UK’s enterprise zones. Chinese businesses have already committed billions to enterprise zones in London and Manchester. The conference was a chance to show them the potential of other enterprise zones and for business leaders from the UK and Asia to explore trade and investment opportunities. The conference was organised by Advanced Business Park, a major Chinese commercial enterprise, one year after they announced a £1 billion investment to transform the London Royal Albert Dock into a new business district in London.
Supporting Great British high streets
Between 14 and 28 May, over 900 markets across Britain, including 100 youth markets, held thousands of events as part of the third annual “Love your local market” fortnight long celebration of market culture in the UK delivered by the National Association of British Market Authorities and supported by the coalition Government.
The campaign is proving so successful that it will be now be recreated on the continent. France, Italy, Spain and Holland have all signed up to the “Love your local market” brand, and will be followed by the likes of Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Slovenia and Slovakia next year.
As part of the coalition Government’s commitment to the high street, the future high streets forum chaired by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), published a report on 31 May identifying local leadership as the recipe for high street success.
The report “Good Leadership: Great High Streets” analysed four Portas pilot towns and found that good local leadership was behind their successful reinvention. It concludes that any town centre, regardless of size, can really benefit from good leadership habits. The forum recommends that every town centre across the country puts in place a structure, direction and a vision for their work.
Celebrating England’s counties
On 16 May, my Department raised the flag of Middlesex to mark Middlesex day, and on 2 June my Department also raised the flag of Dorset to celebrate Dorset day. England’s traditional counties date back over a thousand years of history, but in the past, many of them were sidelined by Whitehall and municipal bureaucrats. By contrast, the coalition Government are championing local people in flying the flag for such traditional ties and community spirit.
I am placing in the Library copies of the press notices and documents associated with these announcements.
Zero-carbon Homes
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)
The coalition Government have strengthened the energy requirements for new homes significantly since we came into office, reducing energy bills for home owners and saving carbon as we move towards the zero-carbon home standard from 2016. We are now putting in place the final piece of the jigsaw by bringing forward legislation to enable the framework for allowable solutions.
The zero-carbon homes standard will be achieved through a combination of high energy efficiency standards, further measures on the dwelling to mitigate carbon, such as solar panels, and allowable solutions. From 2016, we intend to introduce a further strengthening of the energy performance requirements which we anticipate to be set at a level equivalent to level 4 energy standards of the code for sustainable homes.
But making all new homes zero carbon “on site” is not always physically feasible or cost-effective for house builders, so the Government will also introduce a system to enable remaining carbon emissions abatement to be met through flexible, cost-effective allowable solutions. Allowable solutions will be “off site” measures to be supported by house builders. These could include creating or expanding connections to sustainable energy sources—for example, district heating schemes—or improving existing homes’ energy efficiency by retro-fitting measures such as solid wall insulation.
A consultation was held last summer on options for allowable solutions— principles, price cap and delivery methods. This proposed a menu of options for house builders, including taking action themselves, contracting with a third party provider to deliver allowable solutions on their behalf, or making a payment to a fund which invests in projects equivalent to their obligations for carbon abatement. The Government will publish their response to the consultation shortly.
We need to have a legislative framework to introduce allowable solutions alongside the well-established approach to setting energy performance standards through part L of the building regulations.
Our approach represents a much more flexible and cost-effective way forward for house builders. But we recognise that this will represent a bigger challenge for small house builders than for larger house builders. That is why we think an exemption is necessary and we will consult on how an exemption will work, to ensure that it is targeted effectively and is proportionate.
Zero carbon is one of the most ambitious standards for reducing carbon from new homes anywhere in the world. We have taken great strides with the changes to building regulations we have made since 2010; legislation for allowable solutions will enable us to complete the picture in time for 2016.
Telecommunications Council
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The Telecommunications Council will take place in Luxembourg on 6 June 2014. I will represent the UK and below are the agenda items and the positions; I intend to adopt each of them.
The first item is a progress report from the presidency on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning measures to ensure a high level of network and information security across the Union. (First Reading—EM6342/13). While no formal debate is scheduled on the agenda it is expected that some member states may wish to intervene. In this instance the UK’s intervention will strongly support the presidency’s progress report and in particular the principles in the report related to information sharing, co-operation and incident reporting, which would allow far more flexibility for member states than the Commission’s original proposal.
The second item is a progress report on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down measures concerning the European single market for electronic communications and to achieve a connected continent (First Reading—EM13562/13 and 13555/13 + ADDs 1-2). Again, no formal debate is scheduled but should there be interventions, I intend to indicate the UK’s continued support for a simplified regulation and in particular an outcome that leads to the cessation of mobile roaming charges by 2016, along with increased consumer protection. Finally, we will also reiterate our stance, whereby we do not support the proposals that would give the Commission further competency over spectrum management nor those that would result in the introduction of regulation regarding net neutrality.
These items will be followed by a presentation by the Commission on the latest iteration of the digital agenda scoreboard; I do not expect to intervene on this item.
This will be followed by three items under AOB, all updates from the presidency on: the proposal for a regulation from the European Parliament and of the Council on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market (First Reading—EM10977/12); a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures to reduce the costs of deploying high-speed electronic communication networks (First Reading—EM7999/13); and a proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the accessibility to public sector bodies’ websites (First Reading—EM16006/11). I do not intend to intervene on any of these items.
Finally, the Italian delegation will inform the Council of their priorities for their forthcoming presidency before Council adjourns until the next meeting in November 2014.
Closure of MOD Storage and Distribution Depot (Dülmen)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)
As part of the strategic defence and security review in 2010 we announced that we would withdraw half of the UK armed forces currently based in Germany by 2015 and the remainder by 2020.
Consistent with that announcement, we are now in a position to clarify when we will close the Ministry of Defence (MOD) main storage and distribution depot in Dülmen, Germany. The depot will cease non-core activities by October 2015 with a view to closing the site by September 2016 and releasing it to the German federal authorities.
Regrettably, this will result in redundancies of 242 locally employed civilians, in two tranches in autumn 2015 and 2016. MOD officials will work closely with the German employment agency to support the transition of the employees into new jobs, including paid time off to attend training and resettlement courses. The small number of UK civil servants will be given access to normal departmental procedures to secure alternative employment and the UK military staff will be redeployed to other posts as their roles cease.
Detailed plans for the drawdown from the Wulfen depot are still to be formulated, and are not specifically linked to the decision regarding Dülmen. I can also provide assurance that all relevant German authorities will continue to be involved by us as we work to finalise plans for our withdrawal from Germany.
Ofsted Annual Report
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)
On 27 May, Ofsted published its sixth report on welfare and duty of care in armed forces initial training, copies of which have been placed in the Library of the House. Following visits to nine armed forces initial training establishments between September 2013 and January 2014, Ofsted reports that recruits and trainees feel safe and that their welfare needs are largely being met.
All the locations assessed by Ofsted were judged as “good” or better, and two, in particular, were rated as “outstanding”. Importantly, Ofsted records that there has been continued improvement across the services and training establishments since the adult learning inspectorate published its first report in 2005, that:
“the welfare of recruits and trainees is now an intrinsic part of military training”,
and,
“the supervision of recruits and trainees is thorough in all establishments, and particularly good care is taken of those under the age of 18.”
Ofsted has, nevertheless, made a number of recommendations for improvement in data management, sharing of best practice, site infrastructure and the selection and training of instructors.
The armed forces are determined to ensure that the initial training environment is supportive of the needs of those new to the service and the particular focus of the Ofsted inspection provides additional detail on which to reflect and review the effectiveness of our training regimes.
New Energy Investments
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Michael Fallon)
Eight major renewable electricity projects have now signed the first contracts under the Government’s electricity market reforms. These projects will provide up to £12 billion of private sector investment, supporting 8,500 jobs by 2020.
The Government are committed to working actively with project developers to avoid delays to projects while enduring electricity market reform (EMR) is being put in place. These contracts, awarded under the final investment decision enabling for renewables process, will enable developers of renewable electricity projects to take final or other critical investment decisions, directly impacting on the time to commissioning their project.
These projects include offshore wind farms, coal to biomass conversion plants and dedicated biomass plants with combined heat and power, and together represent:
additional renewables capacity of approximately 4.5 GW;
around 15 TWh or 14% of the renewable electricity we expect to come forward by 2020; and
a reduction of about 10 Mt CO2 from the UK power sector per annum compared to fossil fuel generation.
We have put in place a framework of sustainability criteria and reporting requirements for biomass which covers these projects. These will ensure that we only provide support for biomass plants which meet the appropriate legal requirements for low-carbon generation.
These contracts are just one of the electricity market reform (EMR) measures designed to ensure a reliable, diverse and low-carbon power market. DECC has robust plans to deal with security of supply, working jointly with national grid and the energy regulator Ofgem.
I am grateful to all applicants for their participation in the FID enabling for renewables process. The level of interest in the process demonstrates industry support for EMR and the healthiness of the renewables sector in the UK.
The signed contracts were yesterday laid in both Houses.
Shale Gas and Geothermal Energy (Underground Access)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Michael Fallon)
The Government published a consultation on proposals to reform the procedure for securing underground access to oil or gas deposits and geothermal energy on the 23 May. This consultation will run for 12 weeks and close on 15 August.
This consultation concerns two fledgling industries, shale gas and geothermal energy, which may hold significant potential for adding to the UK’s domestic energy resources. While these industries are both at an early stage, the Government are considering whether the existing legislative framework is fit for purpose to enable them to determine this potential.
The consultation examines the existing procedures by which companies who wish to extract oil, gas or geothermal energy obtain access rights to underground land, and the problems raised by these procedures. We believe that, so far as underground development goes, the existing system does not strike the right balance between the legitimate interests and concerns of landowners, and the benefits to the community and nation at large of permitting development, where that development is otherwise acceptable in planning and environmental terms.
The consultation also sets out the options that have been considered during this process. The preferred solution presented consists of three elements: an underground right of access below 300 metres (nearly 1000 feet), a voluntary payment from industry, and a voluntary public notification for access. The voluntary industry agreement would be supported by a statutory reserve power in the case that industry defaulted on their commitment. Notification would be made in the form of public announcements to the local community. This solution would significantly simplify the existing procedure. The shale and geothermal industries will be able to proceed with developing their potential, and local communities will be appropriately informed and compensated for this right of access.
The solution outlined in the consultation does not change any other aspect of the existing regulatory system, such as procedures for surface access, planning/environmental permits or safety controls. In particular, the proposals do not affect existing requirements for public consultation prior to the grant of planning permission or environmental permits of developments.
The Government are inviting feedback on the solution outlined in this consultation, and would welcome views from anyone with an interest.
The consultation can be viewed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/underground-drilling-access.
Copies of the publication have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Thames Tideway Tunnel
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)
I wish to update the House on progress on the Thames Tideway Tunnel since the written ministerial statement—3 November 2011, Official Report, column 41WS—made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon).
In that statement the Government reaffirmed their support for Thames Water’s plans to build a tunnel to reduce the amount of untreated waste water being discharged into the River Thames. We also stated that while the private sector could and should deliver the project, the Government were willing in principle to provide contingent financial support for exceptional project risks where this offered best value for money for customers and taxpayers.
Following due consideration the Secretary of State has determined to exercise his power today to issue a Thames Tideway Tunnel project specification notice and a Thames Tideway Tunnel project preparatory work notice made under the Water Industry (Specified Infrastructure Projects) (English Undertakers) Regulations 2013 (“SIP regulations” ). These notices will be available on the gov.uk website shortly.
This action follows the consultation undertaken from 4 December 2013 to 6 January 2014 on the draft reasons for specifying the project under the SIP regulations as a specified infrastructure project and the draft reasons for issuing a preparatory work notice for Thames Water. On 23 April 2014 we published a summary of responses to these two consultations.
The specification notice prevents Thames Water from undertaking the Thames Tideway Tunnel and requires it to put the project out to tender by running a competitive procurement for an infrastructure provider (“IP”) that is separate from Thames Water. The specification notice contains the activities that the IP has to undertake and includes the project’s financing, design, construction, operation and ownership. The preparatory work notice permits or requires Thames Water to undertake certain activities of a preparatory nature in connection with the specified infrastructure project.
In addition to these notices, we have also published an additional two notices: a notice setting out the Secretary of State’s reasons for specifying the project and a notice setting out his reasons for issuing the preparatory work notice.
In summary, the competitive procurement of a separate IP will help ensure value for money by providing an objective means of testing whether the financing costs of the project are appropriate and reasonable. If the project were to be delivered solely by Thames Water then this competitive element for determining and helping drive down the financing costs of the project would be absent. A separate entity that undertakes the project will also isolate the project risks within that entity. That will both reduce the risk that the costs of delivering Thames Water’s other services to customers will increase due to the risk profile of the project, and ensure that any Government financial support is focused on the project.
Thames Water is permitted or required to undertake certain preparatory work in relation to the specified project where this makes sense for the project timetable or to reduce interface risks. This preparatory work has a similar risk profile to Thames Water’s existing business.
Following the procurement process, the economic regulator Ofwat will consider designating and licensing the successful bidder as the project’s IP. This is likely to be in mid-2015. Assuming the IP is licensed, it will then become subject to a modified regulatory regime which is broadly similar to the regime which applies to water and sewerage companies.
Following further careful consideration, we have also confirmed that a support package from the Government is necessary to enable the project to attract private sector finance at a cost that is reasonable for customers. In structuring this support package we have been mindful of the need to keep the burden on the taxpayer to the absolute minimum required for the project to be viable.
Through the Government support package, the Government will take on some of the low probability but high impact risks the project faces during the construction phase. If these risks do not materialise, there will be no exposure for the taxpayer. The package provides support in the following five scenarios:
where an event during construction leads to an insurance claim that exceeds the limits of the IPs’ insurance cover, the Government would meet the liability above that limit. In addition, if certain insurance cover becomes unavailable in the market and is essential for the project to continue. Government will consider providing that cover;
should the IP be unable to access debt capital markets as a result of national or international economic or political events, the Government would be prepared to provide a short-term loan on commercial terms. This would help the project to continue during any period of disruption in the financial markets, for example like those experienced in 2008;
where exceptionally large cost overruns occur the Government would be prepared to invest equity in the project to enable it to continue to completion where this remains viable. The IP would be incentivised to manage costs and so avoid this situation occurring and to seek further private equity before calling on the Government. However, if the Government were required to invest, appropriate measures would be put in place to ensure taxpayers received value for money;
the Government support package also makes provision for the Government to discontinue the project and pay compensation to debt and equity investors in certain circumstances. For example, where the IP requests an investment of Government equity due to exceptional cost overruns, the Government would have the option of discontinuing and paying compensation rather than providing equity; and
the final element of the Government support package is a commitment from the Government that should the IP go into special administration and remain there beyond 18 months, the Government will either make an offer to purchase the IP or discontinue the project.
The Government support package is subject to state-aid approval from the EU Commission.
Following the Government’s decision to specify the project, we expect Thames Water to initiate the procurement process for the IP by publishing a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union. Competitions for the three main construction contracts for the project are already under way.
Afghanistan (Monthly Progress Report)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, is today publishing the 37th progress report on developments in Afghanistan since November 2010.
On 5 April, the Afghan people went to the polls to elect a new President, as well as their provincial council representatives. On election day, voter turnout was high with preliminary results indicating over 6.6 million validated votes, 36% of which were from women. In what was one of their biggest and most complex security challenges to date, the ANSF successfully secured the presidential elections with millions of Afghans able to cast their vote without significant incident or disruption. Crucially, in terms of maintaining voter confidence and preventing insurgency momentum, there were no high profile attacks (HPAs) on 5 April.
On 26 April, five UK service personnel—Captain Thomas Clarke, Flight Lieutenant Rakesh Chauhan, acting Warrant Officer Class 2 Spencer Faulkner, Corporal James Walters, and Lance Corporal Oliver Thomas—were tragically killed in a helicopter crash south of Kandahar. A full investigation is under way into the incident but there is currently no indication of enemy activity being a contributing factor. The crash resulted in the third biggest single loss of UK life in Afghanistan since 2001. These deaths are a timely reminder that our troops continue to risk their lives in Afghanistan. Their legacy is realised in the tens of thousands of Afghan security forces who they have helped mentor and who are now securing the country’s future. They have protected our security at home and abroad by helping the Afghans take control of their own. Their sacrifice will not be forgotten.
I am placing the report in the Library of the House. It will also be published on the gov.uk website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/afghanistan-progress-reports
Support for British Nationals Overseas
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)
The Foreign Secretary launched the 2013-16 Consular Strategy in April last year, setting out a series of changes to drive innovation and excellence in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s consular services.
One year on, the FCO has already delivered significant improvements to the services received by our consular customers across the world:
We have given our front-line consular staff the skills and tools to identify and assist our most vulnerable customers, including new policies for cases involving children and young people, and those who have been affected by mental health problems, rape and sexual abuse, and forced into marriage.
We are using new and strengthened relationships with non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as mental health charity “MIND”, and missing persons charity “Missing Abroad” to provide specialist services in areas we cannot.
We now offer our customers a fast, professional and consistent response to their first-time telephone enquiries through our three global contact centres, fielding over 30,000 calls a month from British nationals worldwide. This is enabling our front-line staff to assist those most in need.
In March 2014, we completed the full transfer of all responsibility for passport applications, decisions and the issuing of documents to Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO), who now offer a online passport application service to 4 million British nationals overseas, and have reduced the cost of replacing or renewing passports for British nationals overseas by 35% (from April 2014).
We are making better use of digital channels and technology. The FCO’s new Crisis IT system was successfully deployed in our recent crisis responses, including in Ukraine, South Sudan and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. We have standardised and improved the consular assistance information online at: www.gov.uk, and increasingly offer social media channels for responding to travel advice and assistance enquiries.
Alongside all of these changes, we have simplified notarial and documentary services, worked with host Governments to reduce bureaucracy, and stopped providing some services where the private sector offers comparable and trusted alternatives.
Drawing on this, I am pleased to highlight that the FCO has updated our public targets to reflect the improvements made to our consular services, demonstrating our commitment to providing high levels of service to British national overseas. These new targets appear in the updated version of “Support for British nationals abroad: A Guide”, in print and online. We will use these new, ambitious targets to drive and measure the performance of our consular network.
Our efforts do not stop here. In the next year, we will continue to drive forward delivery of the 2013-16 Consular Strategy. We will continue to review and update our policies for providing assistance. We will continue to prepare for and manage crisis situations effectively, carrying out a lessons learned process after each crisis with the aim of continuous improvement of our performance and procedures. We are aiming to deliver more services digitally, including enabling our customers to pay for some services online. We will help British nationals find the information they need to help themselves, and get through to us quickly and easily when they need consular support. And we will complete our preparations for helping British nationals stay safe at the FIFA World cup in Brazil.
I am proud of the work being carried out by the FCO staff across the world, often in very challenging circumstances. I can assure you that the FCO remains committed to providing a modern, efficient consular service supporting British nationals overseas.
I am placing copies of the following documents in the Libraries of both Houses:
“Support for British nationals abroad: A Guide” (updated June 2014)
A full update on changes made under the first year 2013-16 Consular Strategy
Reforms to the Riot (Damages) Act
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)
Today, I have launched a consultation on reforms to the Riot (Damages) Act 1886.
The Riot (Damages) Act seeks to protect vulnerable communities from the financial impact of serious disorder both on individuals and businesses. However, following the widespread disorder in the summer of 2011, it became clear that the legislation governing riot compensation was outdated and of limited benefit to victims and to those handling claims. The Government commissioned an independent review of the Act in 2013 which reported in November. The Government believe that protection should continue to be provided to individuals and businesses affected by riots. Having considered the recommendations of the independent review, the Government will now consult on options to reform and modernise the law and practice. The results of this consultation will help to inform the draft Bill we intend to present to this House later in the parliamentary Session.
A copy of this consultation will be placed in the House Library. It will also be available on the Home Office website: www.gov.uk.
Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
The Government have decided that the United Kingdom should opt in to the proposed Council decision on the approval, on behalf of the European Union, of the Hague convention of 30 June 2005 on choice of court agreements. The president of the Council was notified on 30 April.
The Hague convention on choice of law agreements was agreed in 2005. It will give greater legal force to choice of court agreements—that is to say, agreements made by the parties to a civil or commercial contract about their preferred dispute resolution forum in the event of a dispute.
The effect of the convention will be that courts will, in principle, have to give effect to such agreements. Similar rules are already provided in the recast Brussels I regulation (1215/2012) for intra-EU cases. The convention will, however, mean that courts in the EU will, in principle, be required to decline jurisdiction in favour of a court in a non-EU country that has been chosen by the parties. In the absence of ratification of the convention, courts in the EU would have no such obligation. If those courts accepted jurisdiction it could work against legal certainty and, in certain cases, lead to the proceedings being substantially slowed.
The convention has so far been ratified by Mexico and signed by the United States and the European Union. It is expected that more states will ratify soon.
The operation of the principle of exclusive EU external competence is such that, because of the existence of internal EU rules on jurisdiction, the EU must act collectively to give effect to this convention and a Council decision is required. Once approved, the effect of the decision will be that the convention has effect throughout the EU (with the exception of Denmark) as a matter of EU law.
The convention is likely to be of particular benefit to UK stakeholders, including those in the City of London. As a major centre for commercial business, the UK will benefit from enhanced legal certainty in relation to choice of court agreements. Commercial contracts worldwide specify with impressive frequency English common law as the applicable law, with courts in the UK chosen as the forums for resolution of any disputes. Given the benefits likely to accrue to UK interests from the convention, the Government have decided to opt in.
Government's Legislative Programme 2014-15
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
Following yesterday’s state opening of Parliament, and for the convenience of the House, I am listing below the 11 Bills which were announced yesterday:
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill
Childcare Payments Bill
Infrastructure Bill
Modern Slavery Bill
National Insurance Contributions Bill
Private Pensions Bill
Pensions Tax Bill
Recall of MPs Bill
Serious Crime Bill
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill
The following Bills will be published in draft:
Protection of Charities Bill
Riot (Damages) Bill
National Park Authorities (Elections) Bill
Detailed information about each of these Bills can be accessed from the No. 10 website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/prime-ministers-office-10-downing-street
Government's Legislative Programme (Northern Ireland)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
The Fourth Session UK legislative programme unveiled in the Queen’s Speech on 4 June contains measures of relevance to the people of Northern Ireland.
The following is a summary of the legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech and its proposed application to Northern Ireland. It does not include draft Bills.
The list also identifies the lead Government Department.
The following Bills will extend to Northern Ireland, in whole or in part, and deal mainly with excepted/reserved matters. Discussions will continue between the Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that, where provisions that are specifically for a transferred purpose are included in any of these Bills, the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly will be sought for them:
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) (MOD)
National Insurance Contributions (HM Treasury)
Childcare Payments (HM Treasury)
Pensions Tax (HM Treasury)
Recall of MPs (Cabinet Office)
The following Bills may extend to Northern Ireland to varying degrees. They may require the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly in relation to provisions in the devolved field:
Serious Crime (Home Office)
Infrastructure (Department for Transport)
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill (BIS)
Private Pensions (DWP)
Modern Slavery (Home Office)
Discussions will continue between the Government and the Northern Ireland Executive on those Bills that might include provisions that require the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly
The following Bills will have limited or no application to Northern Ireland:
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism (MOJ)
Draft Protection of Charities (Cabinet Office)
Draft Riot (Damages) (Home Office)
Draft National Park Authorities (Elections) (DEFRA)
Government's Legislative Programme (Scotland)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alistair Carmichael)
Nine of the 11 new Bills mentioned in the Queen’s Speech for this Session of Parliament contain provisions that apply in Scotland, either in full or in part.
In this legislative Session we will take measures that will help build a fairer society and a stronger economy across the United Kingdom.
Thousands of working families in Scotland will benefit from help to meet child care costs. The speech also outlines the reforms to the pensions system, giving savers greater discretion over the use of their retirement funds.
The Government will also help hard-pressed small businesses with measures to help them more easily secure the vital finances that they need to grow.
We will maximise North sea resources, helping to ensure future energy supply by implementing recommendations of the Wood review. We will also take forward proposals to give communities the right to buy a stake in their local renewable electricity scheme and gain a greater share in the associated financial benefits.
We will also legislate to ensure that armed forces charities are able to receive Government payments under the commitments of the armed forces covenant and we will increase the accountability of Members of Parliament by introducing a mechanism for the recall of Members where serious wrongdoing has occurred.
Other measures will help tackle serious crime across the UK including in Scotland, for example in clamping down on drug-cutting agents, and we will work with the Scottish Government on various measures including extending the use of serious crime prevention orders to Scotland and bringing forward amendments to the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 to help crack down on that abominable crime.
The speech also reiterated the commitment of the Government to making the case for Scotland staying in the United Kingdom in 2014. The Government will fight for a secure Scotland within a strong and prosperous United Kingdom and will continue to work to help create a stronger economy and a fairer society both in Scotland and the United Kingdom.
During this Session we will also reaffirm our commitment to strengthening devolution by commencing vital provisions of the Scotland Act 2012. From April 2015, UK stamp duty land tax and landfill tax will be switched off in Scotland and the Scottish Parliament will introduce new Scottish taxes to replace them. Scottish Ministers will also have enhanced borrowing powers and access to a cash reserve to manage revenues from the two taxes. This will increase the accountability of the Scottish Government and Parliament for raising funds as well as taking decisions about how they spend them.
From April 2016, a Scottish rate of income tax will also be introduced, giving the Scottish Parliament additional flexibility in how it raises funds for devolved spending.
This statement provides a summary of the legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech and its application to Scotland. It does not include draft Bills.
The Government are committed to the principles of the Sewel convention, and we will continue to work constructively with the Scottish Government to secure consent for Bills that contain provisions requiring the consent of the Scottish Parliament.
The Bills listed in section 1 will apply to Scotland, either in full or in part, on introduction. Section 2 details Bills that will not apply in Scotland at introduction.
Section 1—Legislation applying to the United Kingdom, including Scotland (either in full or in part):
Armed Forces (Service Complaints And Financial Assistance)
Childcare Payments
Infrastructure
National Insurance Contributions
Pensions Tax
Private Pensions
Recall Of Members Of Parliament
Serious Crime
Small Business, Enterprise And Employment
Section 2—Legislation that will not apply in Scotland:
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism
Modern Slavery
Government's Legislative Programme (Wales)
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
The Government’s Fourth Session legislative programme announced in the Queen’s Speech on 4 June contains a wide range of measures that will apply to Wales, either in full or in part.
The following Bills and draft Bills will extend to Wales:
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill (Ministry of Defence)
Childcare Payments Bill (HM Revenue and Customs and HM Treasury)
Modern Slavery Bill (Home Office)
National Insurance Contributions Bill (HM Revenue and Customs)
Pensions Tax Bill (HM Treasury)
Private Pensions Bill (Department for Work and Pensions)
Draft Protection of Charities Bill (Cabinet Office)
Recall of MPs Bill (Cabinet Office)
Draft Riot (Damages) Bill (Home Office)
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill (Ministry of Justice)
Serious Crime Bill (Home Office)
The following Bills may extend to Wales in varying degrees:
Infrastructure Bill (Department for Transport)
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
The following draft Bill will not extend to Wales:
Draft National Park Authorities (Elections) Bill (Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Discussions will continue with the Welsh Government on Bills that might include provisions that require the consent of the National Assembly for Wales or Welsh Ministers.
House of Lords
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill [HL]
Medical Innovation Bill [HL]
Mutuals’ Redeemable and Deferred Shares Bill [HL]
Assisted Dying Bill [HL]
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
Committee of Selection
The Chairman of Committees
That in accordance with Standing Order 63 a Committee of Selection be appointed to select and propose to the House the names of the members to form each select committee of the House (except the Committee of Selection itself and any committee otherwise provided for by statute or by order of the House) or any other body not being a select committee referred to it by the Chairman of Committees, and the panel of Deputy Chairmen of Committees; and that the following members together with the Chairman of Committees be appointed to the Committee:
B Anelay of St Johns, L Bassam of Brighton, L Faulkner of Worcester, L Hill of Oareford, L Laming, L Moser, L Newby, B Royall of Blaisdon, L Wakeham, L Wallace of Tankerness.
Queen’s Speech
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Deighton) (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate following Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. The measures set out yesterday demonstrate this Government’s commitment to securing the UK’s economic success by creating a stronger, more competitive economy for the longer term. Through the British people’s hard work and the effective policies of this Government, we find ourselves in a far superior economic position than this time last year, when some were expressing concern regarding the prospects for recovery.
No major advanced economy grew faster than the UK over the past year or in the first quarter of this year. Employment is at record levels. Last month’s inflation of 1.8% was below target. We are seeing competition in the supermarkets, which is pushing food prices down. Wages are rising at a similar pace to prices and real take-home pay is increasing. We are completing major infrastructure projects: for example, a dramatically improved King’s Cross station, smart motorways to relieve congestion across the country and, yesterday, a new Queen’s Terminal at Heathrow airport to enhance our international connectivity.
The fiscal challenge facing this Government in 2010 required urgent action. This meant not just committing to reducing the deficit, which is on course to halve this year from that 2010 level, but doing it in a way that gave markets confidence and helped keep interest rates low. The Government’s decision to deliver the majority of consolidation through reduced spending was the only credible option for our country. As a result, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility now predicts that in 2018-19 the UK will have a surplus for the first time in 18 years.
By almost all measures, the performance of the UK employment market is excellent and improving. One way, however, of getting more people into work is by addressing the high cost of childcare. This issue particularly affects women. Even though female participation in the workforce is at an all time high, if we could equalise their labour force participation to that of men the UK could increase growth by 0.5% per year. We are therefore introducing legislation that will further support working families with the cost of childcare. This is beyond the existing £5 billion invested every year in early education and childcare. The Childcare Payments Bill will implement a new tax-free childcare scheme providing up to 1.9 million families with 20% support towards their childcare costs of up to £10,000 per year per child—£2,000 credit per child. This will be available from autumn 2015. This Bill replaces employer-supported childcare with a new, fairer scheme that will be easy to access online, open to working parents irrespective of who they work for, and available, for the first time, to the self-employed.
The quality of a nation’s infrastructure is a key driver of its economic growth. That is why this Government have put investment in transport, energy, telecommunications, flood defences, water, waste and intellectual capital at the heart of our economic strategy. We are making significant progress. Over 2,000 infrastructure projects and improvements have been completed over the past four years. In this financial year alone, over 200 new projects are due to start and another 200 are due to complete, which will directly support over 150,000 jobs in the construction industry. These are part of the £36 billion of investment planned for 2014-15.
These projects form part of our national infrastructure plan, which it is my pleasure to oversee at the Treasury. That plan not only sets out the Government’s decisions about what infrastructure our country needs over the next decade and beyond, it also sets out our strategy for how it will be delivered. It lays out the action that we will take on financing, which builds on both the innovative long-term public funding settlements that we have already announced—£100 billion of capital investment in projects over the next Parliament—and the steps that we have already taken to support private-sector investment, for example through the UK infrastructure guarantee scheme. A significant portion of the UK’s infrastructure investment takes place through corporate financing by our utility companies in the capital markets. This is an extremely efficient way of getting things done because of the confidence that investors, both domestic and international, have in the integrity and independence of our regulation of these sectors. We should hold on to that independence dearly.
The national infrastructure plan also lays out the action that we will take on strengthening planning, where a number of improvements have helped to take planning approvals to a 13-year high. The new specialist planning court for infrastructure, which opened in April, and the additional measures published in the Infrastructure Bill that we have introduced will further streamline the regime for major infrastructure and speed up the discharge of planning conditions. These reforms to planning will further support our efforts to generate a faster, much needed, increase in the housing supply.
In last year’s spending round, the Government committed to the largest programme of roads investment since the 1970s. Between 2010 and 2021, the Government will invest more than £24 billion in our roads. By committing this significant amount of long-term capital and by reforming the Highways Agency so that this capital is deployed efficiently, we intend to address the stop-start cycle of investment previously seen in roads and to ensure that our road network can continue to support the economy and its growth.
On rail, legislation for the first phase of a new north-south high-speed railway is progressing through this Parliament. It is 120 years since we built a mainline railway north of London and it is absolutely imperative that we seize the opportunities that this presents. The new railway complements this Government’s transformational investment in our existing railways. Between 2014 and 2019, Network Rail will spend over £35 billion, continuing a substantial programme of expansion and renewal. We are building the Northern Hub, a programme of rail upgrades across the north of England that will allow up to 700 more trains to run each day and provide space for about 40 million extra passengers a year, and we are delivering an unprecedented programme of electrification across the country.
Passengers on the great western and the east coast main lines will benefit from £6 billion of investment in fast new electric trains, and of course we are transforming rail capacity in the south-east by completing—on time and on budget—Crossrail and Thameslink. That includes rebuilding London Bridge Station, which is being done quite dramatically by keeping it operating at the same time for the benefit of customers. HS2 will connect eight of Britain’s 10 largest cities and more than double capacity on some of our busiest routes. It will directly employ nearly 25,000 people in construction, and the regeneration around stations will support up to 100,000 further jobs. I chaired a task force that examined how to maximise the benefits from this project, and I was persuaded that it can be truly transformational, particularly for our cities in the Midlands and the north, if we approach it strategically and collaboratively so that we capture its full economic potential. I am now working across government to make sure that we do just that.
I was delighted by the overwhelming cross-party support shown for the HS2 phase one Bill during the recent Second Reading debate in the other place, but there remains a long way to go until this legislation receives Royal Assent. I urge Members of both Houses to make this happen quickly, because I believe it is crucial that the scheme’s huge benefits are felt by people and by businesses up and down the country as soon as possible.
Finally on infrastructure, through the reform of the electricity market we have established a framework that will drive investment in energy infrastructure, deliver renewable energy and make sure that we have secure supplies for the future. We have already seen more than £45 billion of investment in electricity infrastructure since 2010. We have agreed the terms for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, the first in a generation. We have set aside more than £1 billion to drive innovation in carbon capture and storage, and that is one of the best offers to develop this technology in the world. We have also increased the share of our electricity that comes from renewables to almost 15% in 2013, up from under 6% at the start of 2010.
It is also important that we get the most from our existing oil and gas reserves in the North Sea. Three months ago the Government accepted Sir Ian Wood’s recommendations on this subject, and we are introducing measures in the Infrastructure Bill to put the principle of maximising economic recovery of petroleum in the UK into statute. Shale gas has significant potential for boosting economic growth and competitiveness, and the Government are creating the most competitive tax regime in Europe to encourage its development, but more still needs to be done. The Government want to put in place the right regulatory framework to support a shale gas industry while ensuring that we protect the environment.
Moving on to local government, we believe that the local enterprise partnerships are best placed to identify local priorities for growth and drive forward local economic development. The Government are currently implementing the recommendations set out by my noble friend Lord Heseltine in his review of UK growth entitled No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth. So far, we have agreed 24 city deals across the country, which have successfully devolved resources to local areas. We are going further. The Government are currently negotiating a growth deal with each of the 39 LEPs that will see them receive a share of the Local Growth Fund, which will total £2 billion in 2015-16 and will be at least £2 billion in each year of the next Parliament. These growth deals demonstrate the Government’s commitment to empowering local areas to take control of the growth agenda in their local economy.
I would like to close my remarks by reviewing how we are making sure that our policies impact people in the fairest way possible. Tax avoidance not only deprives the UK of the money it needs to fund public services, it also undermines public and business confidence in the fairness of our tax system. The National Insurance Contributions Bill includes measures to strengthen the robust stance that this Government are taking in tackling all forms of avoidance. Our approach here is simple: in return for offering a competitive tax system that promotes economic growth, we expect everyone to pay their taxes, and the anti-avoidance measures included in the Bill will reinforce this principle. In addition to tackling those who do not pay their fair share, the Bill will also simplify the collection of national insurance from 5 million self-employed individuals by implementing the self-assessment scheme recommended by the Office of Tax Simplification.
The other main thrust of our fairness policies is quite simply to reduce the tax burden on the millions of working people in the country. In this respect, noble Lords should note that the personal allowance will increase again to £10,500 from April next year, and fuel duty has been frozen until the end of this Parliament. We have helped local authorities to freeze council tax in every year of this Parliament. We are reducing the impact of government policies on energy bills by £50 for average households—a way in which we can sensibly control energy bills. We have also made it easier to save and easier for people to access their pensions. But the best way of getting money into people’s pockets, and the best way of helping them to raise their living standards, is from the jobs and opportunities that are created and sustained by a dynamic, growing economy. I believe that the measures set out by Her Majesty yesterday will achieve this.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, and to pay tribute to him for his sterling work over the past year in promoting HS2. Six weeks ago, the House of Commons carried the Second Reading of the HS2 Bill by the colossal margin of 452 votes to 41. HS2 is vital to transforming transport capacity and connectivity between London and the major cities of the Midlands and the north. The Bill will proceed in this Session with our support.
However, if HS2 is the “Flying Scotsman” of the new Session, the rest of the Queen’s Speech barely merits “Thomas the Tank Engine”. Starting with the economy, the gracious Speech tells us:
“An updated Charter for Budget Responsibility will … ensure that … governments spend taxpayers’ money responsibly”.
I assume that this means that the Chancellor will be updating his fiscal rules of 2010 and proclaiming them as a charter. However, since the Chancellor is not on target to meet either of his 2010 rules by 2015 as intended, because of the weakness of the economy for most of the four years since he became Chancellor, it is hard to see why the public should have more confidence in any new set of rules just because they are dressed up as a charter.
As for the proposed legislation to cut bureaucracy and promote access to finance for small businesses, we welcome any measures to deal with late payments in particular—although the public sector is itself often the culprit. However, the Government have spent the past four years announcing one initiative after another on access to finance, mostly to little effect: remember Project Merlin? The House will not be holding its breath. The plain fact is that, as the Bank of England’s latest Trends in Lending report said in April, lending to all businesses is still falling, with small and medium-sized enterprises hit worst.
The Queen’s Speech also promises yet another Bill to reform the planning regime and to promote infrastructure, even as the ink is barely dry on the previous Growth and Infrastructure Act—intended, yes, to reform the planning regime and to promote infrastructure. “Déjà vu all over again”, as someone once said.
The House will therefore want to focus not so much on the measures in the Queen’s Speech as on the economic fundamentals. Thankfully, the economy is at last reviving. We all welcome the recent improvements in employment and output, and the fact that inflationary pressure remains low. However, before we hear too much about an economic plan that is working, the best gloss that can be put on Britain’s relative economic performance is that, at last, we are in catch-up mode. Unlike the US, Germany, France, Canada and Japan, the UK’s GDP is still below its 2008 peak—out of the G7, only Italy has a worse record. As the Office for National Statistics says in its latest analysis,
“UK real GDP fell by 7.2% … and the subsequent economic recovery has been one of the slowest in the G7 … and in UK economic history”.
Nor has economic growth been accompanied by any pick-up in productivity, the key determinant of long-term prosperity. Productivity growth in the UK since 2007 has been lower than in all other member countries of the G7, including Italy. This underlying productivity weakness partly explains why average real incomes have been languishing for so long and why wage growth has been so weak.
Exports remain especially weak. The current account deficit stands at 5.5% of GDP, the highest level since records began in 1955. Over the past two years, the UK’s exports have been flat, and the Government are not remotely on track to meet their target of doubling exports to £1 trillion by 2020.
As for employment—made much of by the noble Lord—the top-line employment figures tell only part of the story. For instance, 1.4 million people are working part-time because they are unable to find full-time employment. As the Bank of England notes, this very high number of people reporting that they would like to work longer hours points to considerable underemployment. The rise in claimed self-employment, which accounts for more than half the increase in total employment reported since last summer, also suggests that millions simply cannot find permanent jobs and are looking for other ways to make ends meet.
Youth unemployment remains especially high. At 19%, the UK’s youth unemployment rate is higher than that of Italy, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany. We are failing the next generation —a lost generation of young people with poor skills and no work, and little hope for the future.
The truth is that Britain is growing but the foundations are weak, the young are especially disadvantaged and a good deal of today’s growth is being driven by consumer debt and a surge in house prices. This partly also explains why growth is so regionally imbalanced, concentrated on London and the south, while the Midlands and the north do less well. Tellingly, 21 of the 25 worst performing retail centres in the country are in the north, the Midlands and Wales, while 22 of the 25 best performing are south of the Watford Gap.
Household consumption and private housing investment, fuelled by the housing price surge in London and the south-east, represented fully 60% of GDP growth last year, while net trade and business investment, essential for driving innovation and high-value jobs, remain worryingly low. A critical issue is the failure to build new homes on anything like the scale that the country needs. The rate of housebuilding is lower than at any time since the 1920s. Barely half of the 200,000 new homes a year that are required are being built nationally, and less than a third of the 60,000 a year needed in London.
Where are the policies to deal with these fundamental weaknesses, to improve youth skills, to transform vocational education, to accelerate investment and to dramatically improve the rate of housebuilding? To tackle youth unemployment, we need more apprenticeships and more work opportunities for young people, yet the number of apprenticeships for under-19s is still below its 2010 level—a figure disguised by the Government lumping all apprenticeship numbers into one total, when most of the growth under this headline number is for those already in employment in their mid or late 20s. Even in the public sector, apprenticeship numbers are pitiful and too little is changing too slowly. The Civil Service used to have no Whitehall-wide apprenticeship scheme whatever. Now it has just started but for a mere 100 apprentices when there should be thousands.
The Government’s Youth Contract, billed by the Deputy Prime Minister as the big answer to youth unemployment when it was launched two and a half years ago, has massively underachieved. The policy was for 160,000 wage incentives for employers taking on long-term unemployed young people. There were also to be 250,000 unpaid work experience places. Two and a half years later, a mere 4,000 young people have been placed with an employer for six months with full government support; that is just 2.5% of the way to 160,000. Furthermore, a recent employers’ survey revealed that 81% of the jobs advertised under the Youth Contract would have been offered anyway. As for the 250,000 work experience placements, fewer than half have in fact been created.
It is a similarly worrying story on housebuilding. Why is the rate of housebuilding so low? It is because of a serious construction skills shortage, private sector land-banking and the unwillingness or sheer inability of the public sector in its various guises, from local government to the MoD and the NHS, to get building on its own land. There have also been some nimby councils but others want to do more but do not have the powers. The Government have done far too little to tackle these problems. For example, three years ago the Prime Minister told us that he wanted to see new garden cities. So far only one has been announced, in Ebbsfleet, which already had planning permission for 10,000 homes.
To drive improvements in skills, housing and infrastructure, the Government should be following the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and empowering England’s cities and localities by radically devolving budgets and powers to local authorities and to local enterprise partnerships, overcoming what Vince Cable called the Maoist abolition of the regional development agencies in 2010. Instead, only a fraction of the Heseltine devolution has taken place, mostly dependent on complex and protracted individual city deal negotiations, which is far from the rocket boost required.
It is a similar story of half measures or no measures in respect of energy and infrastructure. The average dual gas and electricity bill is now at a record £1,353, up from £819 in 2009. Over the four years to October 2013, gas prices increased by 21% and electricity prices by 25%. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the share of household income going on essentials has risen by 10% since 2003, which is a huge burden on family budgets. The lack of an effective energy market is part of the explanation. That is not just our contention: since Ed Miliband put this issue up in lights, it has become the Government’s and the regulator’s contention too.
In February, Ed Davey asked the big six energy companies to review their pricing. He also asked Ofgem to think radically and even consider breaking up the big six if they had been overcharging. In March, Ofgem reported back that it found evidence of both collusion and overcharging, evidence of “possible tacit coordination” between energy companies that includes a,
“strong alignment of pricing announcements, in both timing and extent”,
and evidence that the big six have seen increasing profits that do not appear to reflect increasing efficiency, a possible sign of lack of competition. A Competition and Markets Authority investigation is now under way, but nothing is being done in this Queen’s Speech to freeze or reduce energy prices while that happens and we will not get any action on competition until after the election. As for energy infrastructure and new supply, according to a recent survey by the CBI and KPMG, two-thirds of British companies fear that UK infrastructure will deteriorate over the next five years, and their concerns are most critical on energy.
Legislation on fracking is proposed in the Queen’s Speech which, the Government say, would put shale gas production in line with the coal industry, water and sewerage, all of which have access to underground land. We welcome that in principle, provided that communities are reassured about impacts on the environment, including contamination of the water table, but the critical issue is that a fifth of the UK’s power-generating capacity will close over the next decade, but plans for delivering new gas and nuclear power stations are well behind the curve. Ministers talk about a dozen new nuclear power plants, but only two are as yet proceeding. As for gas, because of a lack of clarity and confidence in the Government’s capacity mechanism for encouraging new supply, we face a situation where existing gas stations may be mothballed but there is little appetite for new plants. On renewables, there appear to be two separate Governments: Ed Davey’s DECC is in favour while Eric Pickles’s DCLG repeatedly turns down applications for extra capacity.
The story on housing and energy applies to transport, too. Although a few welcome projects, such as Crossrail, Thameslink and HS2, are proceeding—mostly, I should note, inherited from the previous Government—there are too many plans without delivery, the biggest plan of all being the constantly relaunched national infrastructure plan, which is a catalogue of everything on the infrastructure drawing board, only a fraction of which is actually being taken forward
In one vital area of economic importance, extra airport capacity in the south-east of England, there is not even a plan, just a commission, which is not due to report for another year, because for the entirety of this Parliament, the Government have not even been able to form a view, let alone to take a decision. It is the same with the new lower Thames crossing—vital infrastructure to relieve the M25 Dartford crossing, the most congested short stretch of road on the entire trunk network. The previous Government published three options for the new crossing five years ago. Since then, the coalition Government have merely reduced the three options to two so there still is no plan, let alone a decision. Yet a new crossing would be entirely paid for by the private sector through tolls.
The Government’s non-delivery is summed up by the extraordinary saga of the A14. The upgrade of the A14—a vital growth corridor from the east coast ports to the Midlands—was shovel-ready in 2010. One of the first acts of the coalition Government was to cancel it, along with a string of other major transport schemes. Two years later, in 2012, Ministers tried to resuscitate the A14 as a toll road with magic money. That scheme collapsed and last year, finally, the Government said that the A14 would go ahead on its original plan. So a vital major trunk scheme, which might have been finished by now, is not even remotely close to starting. A very large number of the schemes that the Minister mentioned in his remarks from the road plan of last year are simply the resuscitation of schemes that were cancelled in 2010.
As a country, we face huge challenges. At last there is growth but far more needs to be done to tackle youth unemployment and underemployment, and to construct the homes, infrastructure and energy and transport systems that Britain needs to thrive. Where the legislation in the Queen’s Speech addresses these problems, we will give it our support but the imperative is for a bold and ambitious Government—and for that, the general election cannot come soon enough.
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, I think it is common ground on all sides of your Lordships’ House that this was a gracious Speech that was very short, with only 11 Bills promised to add to the three or four being carried over from the previous Session. I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, but did not quite follow his analogy of this being a Thomas the Tank Engine speech. I was sorry that he did not use the attack used by a number of his friends from another place, which I much preferred. They referred to it as being a zombie speech from a zombie Government. Of course, the people who have put that into the mouths of their spokesmen do not really understand what zombies are: although zombies may well be the living dead, they are also immortal.
I am surprised that the Labour Party has chosen to attack this speech for being very short because the only shorter Queen’s Speech in living memory was in the run-up to the 2010 election. There were even fewer Bills promised by Labour at that stage but of course they also had their problems with the coalition between the Blairites and the Brownites. I welcome a short gracious Speech because, to me, good government is not just about legislation. We can all remember the 21 or so law and order Bills that the Labour Party brought in during the 13 years when it was in power but do we think that any one of those had any effect on the crime statistics? Indeed, I have long come to the conclusion that the purpose of a detailed legislative programme is to keep idle hands busy in the House of Commons.
For my part, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I propose not to concentrate on the Bills set out in the gracious Speech but to take a look at the current state of the British economy and perhaps to describe what I see as some of the pitfalls ahead. Notwithstanding the noble Lord’s reservations, there can be no doubt that the UK economy is on the mend. Output is growing at its fastest rate since before the financial crash, unemployment is falling as new jobs are created and inflation is back below the Bank of England target. However, for politicians, like most people in your Lordships’ House, the issues are both political and economic.
First, on the political, for the two coalition parties the challenge is very clear. As a result of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, we now know the date of the next general election, which will be on the first Thursday of May 2015. To do well in that election, both our parties need to demonstrate that the economic policies of the coalition are working and that a return to a Labour Government would put the economic recovery at risk. The coalition has of course been successful in persuading the electorate that the financial crisis in 2008 was the result of the Labour Government’s profligacy. This is obviously slightly unfair as it ignores the effect of the sub-prime mortgage collapse in the United States, notwithstanding the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. However, the success of the arguments made by the coalition is demonstrated by polling figures that have consistently shown that the Government are better trusted to manage the economy than Labour. Of course, Labour has not been helped by the refusal of the shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, to show any remorse for Labour’s period of economic stewardship.
The second recent political argument has been over spending plans for the five years after 2015. The legacy inherited by the coalition in 2010 was a double whammy of an unsustainable deficit of government spending over income and a crippling government debt burden. George Osborne and Danny Alexander, the two key Treasury Ministers, have committed their respective parties to further steps to eliminate the deficit and reduce debt after 2015, although naturally there are disagreements to come between the two parties as to how in practice this would be achieved. In the mix of tax increases and spending cuts, the Tories will be more likely to avoid the former whereas the Liberal Democrats will not wish to rely solely on the latter. However, the two parties are united in opposition to Ed Balls’s recent proposals, which appear to concentrate solely on deficit reduction, ignoring the debt burden.
Inevitably, the political positions of the coalition will not succeed unless the economic recovery continues for the next 12 months, and this is where the economic arguments are relevant. Will the coalition parties be able to claim that the economy has recovered on their watch? As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, and I have indicated, the portents are good. The polls are indicating a surge in the economic confidence of both business and the consumer. Surveys by the employer organisations indicate a significant increase in proposals to invest, and clearly the Government claim some credit for the increase in growth. The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, has rightly described the plans for which he has responsibility in infrastructure spending. I have said before that I have often thought that government policy in this area is rather,
“analogous to a swan, sailing serenely on while declaring that there was no alternative to the austerity programme but underneath the water the legs are paddling furiously to create initiatives to promote economic activity: infrastructure spending, with Crossrail the largest infrastructure scheme in Europe; the regional growth fund; the Green Investment Bank and the business bank; the development of an industrial strategy by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, with concentration on key areas of industry; and the stimulation of the housing market by the Help to Buy scheme”. [Official Report, 27/3/14; col. 608.]
The overwhelming factor at the moment, though, has been the return of what Keynes described as “animal spirits”. No one—no economist, and certainly no politician—quite knows why, over the centuries, consumers have suddenly lost confidence in the economy in which they live, thereby triggering a downturn in economic activity. However, there can be no doubt that the process has been now been reversed in the United Kingdom. As the Bank of England has pointed out recently, the tell-tale sign is the fall in the amount of cash held in ISA accounts—I prefer my pronunciation —which was £2.8 billion in April, the largest monthly fall since ISAs were first introduced in 1999. This cash is currently finding its way into property, equities and the high street.
So what are the risks to our economic recovery? First, as a recent CBI survey indicates, there has been a significant change in business attitude. Business now believes that the biggest threat is political risk. As John Cridland, the director-general of the CBI, has said:
“The UK now has more stable economic foundations, and political risks must not jeopardise this”.
The political risks are obvious. First, whatever one’s view about Scottish independence, there can be no doubt that were the vote to be yes, this would have a disruptive effect on the British economy even if it were only in the short term. Secondly, there is a political risk in what seems to be increased competition in anti-business rhetoric coming from all sides of the political argument as we approach the election, of which I suppose the best example has been Labour’s proposal for an energy freeze which, rightly or wrongly, is clearly having an impact on ongoing investment in the energy field.
Then we come to the political risks of Europe. A number of my colleagues and I have for some time been arguing that there is a significant risk to the growth of our economy if multinational companies form the view that we are going to come out of Europe in 2017. The motor car industry is obviously a classic example, and last year for the first time we exported more cars than we imported. Do we really think that investment in the motor car industry will be continued if people really feel that we are going to come out of the European Union?
Whatever views may be on our role in the European Union, there is no doubt that a recession in the eurozone would seriously damage our economic prospects. There seems to be a serious possibility of Europe spinning down the sort of inflationary spiral which affected Japan for 20 or 25 years. I hope the whole House will agree that in this context the intervention this week by the European Commission with a prescription for UK economic policy—the Times called it,
“a breathtakingly obtuse invitation to tax more and spend more … from the architects of the eurozone’s slump to the leaders of Europe’s fastest growing-economy”—
was totally inappropriate. Indeed, one might assume that the officials who wrote that were in the pay of UKIP, in the same way that I always assumed Arthur Scargill was in the pay of Central Office in Millbank.
Let me return the compliment to the European Commission, certainly to the ECB. I very much hope that today Mr Draghi—who may well already have done so but had not by the time this debate started—will cut the key ECB benchmark interest rate and will stop draining cash out of the banking system by sterilising bond purchases through weekly market operations. This would ultimately create €165 billion of extra money in Europe. This would be better than straightforward quantitative easing, which could be challenged in the German Constitutional Court and would in practice drive down German and French borrowing costs the most, which is not where the drive down needs to take place. I hope Mr Draghi takes this advice, if has not already done so.
The Lord Bishop of Leicester
My Lords, I want to take the opportunity of this debate to raise some questions about the balance of power between London and the regions in our country today. The gracious Speech emphasised the new financial powers to be implemented for the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales. While this is welcome, it highlights even more acutely the need for urgent action to address the very different environment for local government in England, in spite of what the Minister briefly said to us about resourcing local economic partnerships.
It is surely now vital that more power should be devolved from the overly centralist and siloed Whitehall closer to communities that have a stake in the success of places and to where a real link between politicians and positive action can be formed, as the report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, recommended. My conversations in the east Midlands point to a clear consensus that the balance of power between local and central government is not right. Councils are now placed in the impossible position of taking responsibility for abolishing front-line services that are both wanted and needed by local communities. One of the clear messages of the recent elections is surely that a large part of the population has begun to lose confidence in our political processes and that trust has dangerously eroded between the electorate and its representatives.
This suggests that we have reached a moment requiring both leadership and courage: first, in recognising that localism has become an empty word, especially to practitioners, who regard local discretion as little more than a myth. This is demonstrated by the national Planning Inspectorate’s habit of taking big decisions in the teeth of local opposition and the capping of council tax levels. Secondly, leadership is required locally to achieve an effective appraisal of local democratic systems which are so multilayered and overlapping that people increasingly struggle to relate to them. We need now to make progress in rationalising the mishmash of unitary and two-tier structures and, frankly, to reduce the number of locally elected representatives. Would it not be worth considering whether a form of proportional representation might be appropriate for local authority elections in view of the one-party states that now appear in several cities and London boroughs?
These reforms are not best left to some future Parliament but require attention now before the attenuation of local government reaches crisis levels, with even more unbalanced growth across the United Kingdom and even more damage to public service outcomes. The challenges we face are too complex and particular to be left simply to broad national solutions. Rather, we need to draw much more effectively on the creativity and civic energy of local communities. We must think differently about what it means to be a citizen, seeing ourselves not simply as consumers of services but as genuine partners in providing them. This means facing and challenging the unwillingness of many in national government to lose control over public services and decision-making, because they still harbour a fear that local institutions lack the required capacity or capability.
Yet without some risk, innovation and courage in this area, local government will continue to be starved not only of cash but of the civic talent it desperately needs in order to make the scale of transformative changes required of it in the years ahead. At the top of these changes and concerns is of course the funding of adult social care, which clearly is an issue that now troubles most of the population in one way or another. While we have all read headlines about gaps in local authority funding, it is salutary to think that to date none of them has really picked up on the additional costs which the 150 top-tier councils will face if the Government do not meet the cost of capping adult social care, whether on the Dilnot formula or not.
Surely we are now at the point at which it is urgent for the Government to recognise that these costs cannot be laid upon local authorities without bringing the whole structure of local government crashing down. Allied to this is the equally urgent need to face and work through the complex issues surrounding integration of the NHS and social care services. If this is left simply to vested interests—whether political, clinical or bureaucratic—a once-in-a-generation opportunity will be lost, and the scare stories about black holes in the NHS budget, quite apart from those in local authority budgets, will continue to haunt us.
Noble Lords will perhaps forgive me for reminding them that Leicester, at the heart of my diocese, is indeed to become, after protracted legal proceedings, the final resting place of Richard III. This has focused the attention of all of us, especially our city and county councils, along with Leicester University, on the need for closer partnership working at many levels if all the necessary plans and preparations for reinterment with dignity and honour are to be put in place. Such partnership working—on many other matters, of course, as well as this—must be the pattern for the future and will require new attitudes and work patterns with more flexible, outwardly focused and engaged local authority personnel learning how to work with and trust other public and private sector institutions more creatively.
The Richard III experience has also reminded us of the significance of place for all our citizens. People are interested in their story, their heritage, their narrative and character, as well as their prosperity and prospects. On these Benches, we might call this the soul of a place. Here, too, we find a particular role for the churches in partnership with local authorities as significant leaders in creating a sense of identity, and stimulating opportunity, quality of life and cultural richness.
In the City of Leicester and the County of Leicestershire, our city and county councils have taken an effective lead in presenting the story of the Battle of Bosworth and the death and discovery of Richard III, and in creating a major new civic space around our cathedral. All of this speaks to the importance in our national story of this controversial king.
Successive Governments have acknowledged the need to reduce pressure on local government and provide greater local flexibility, but this need is now critical. None of us wants to face a future without an affordable plan for adult social care or to accept a culture that accommodates an increasingly atomised and fragmented public service provision, leaving frail and vulnerable people, in particular, increasingly exposed and anxious. As devolution to the nations of the United Kingdom progresses in this Parliament, so the challenge of resourcing and empowering local authorities in England must be faced and responded to. The gracious Speech’s pledge of Her Majesty’s Government to continue to work to build a fairer society surely requires the revitalisation of local government as an essential part of that pledge.
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market (Con)
In the time available to each of us it is necessary to confine ourselves to a limited number of points and even then to deal with them only in staccato fashion. I warmly welcome the Queen’s Speech and wish to make four points.
However, first I wish to congratulate my noble friend on the Front Bench on his speech. I thought he made an outstanding case for the work on infrastructure that the Government are doing at the present time. I do not intend to repeat the many points he made, but I wish to say how fortunate we are to have him taking the ministerial lead on infrastructure. I believe that we are greatly benefiting from his skills, experience and track record.
I turn to my first point. I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, and dismiss the suggestion by some Labour Front-Benchers that this is a lightweight package from a Government who have run out of steam. I well remember, as Leader of the House of Commons and therefore chairman of the committee making recommendations to Cabinet, the discussions for the programme leading up to the 1992 general election. There are always many candidates for legislation. Every department has a shopping list, and there are always many more candidates than can be entertained in any one year, but that is particularly the case in an election year. The legislative programme has to be shorter than usual in that year. There is no scope for spill-over legislation. Even in those days, when we did not know when the election would be called, provision had to be made for that. Today, with a fixed-term Parliament, we know that the Session will be short. There will certainly be many other things to occupy Parliament: the implications of the Scottish referendum, whichever way the vote turns out, and much debate on EU matters and an EU referendum in advance of the general election, to name just two. I believe that the Government have judged the weight of the Queen’s Speech absolutely correctly.
Secondly, I warmly welcome the economic measures—the charter for budget responsibility, to deal with spending taxpayers’ money responsibly, something which throughout my parliamentary career I have always felt to be of the utmost importance. In this context, I recommend that all with an enthusiasm for this should read the book Conundrum co-written by my successor as Member of Parliament for South Norfolk, Richard Bacon, which is based on years of work by the PAC and demonstrates how much more still needs to be done on this front of spending taxpayers’ money responsibly. I welcome the emphasis on start-ups and small businesses. My first ministerial job was as Minister for Small Businesses. In fact, I was only the second such Minister in the DTI. Much progress has been made since those days. The contribution of these businesses is much more widely acknowledged, but clearly more can be done, and I warmly welcome that. Above all, I welcome the emphasis on the long-term plan to build a stronger economy and reduce the deficit. I believe that the Chancellor’s determined pursuit of his strategy has been masterly and he has seen off his critics. It ill behoves the shadow Chancellor to criticise, given the very important part that he played in the previous Government’s huge overspending and the increase in government debt, which left us so vulnerable when the international crisis came.
I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, but I was astonished by his speech today. There was no word of acknowledgement from him about the disastrous legacy that we inherited. He seems to ignore the fact that the Labour Government were responsible for nearly 10 of the past 13 years. It would be interesting to cost the programme that he has laid out today and see what that would do to bring down the deficit. In that context, the Chancellor has seen off his IMF critics, who now acknowledge that, when they made criticisms of him in the past year, he was right. Like the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, I was deeply concerned by the European Commission’s recent intervention calling for the Government to rein in the Help to Buy scheme and increase council taxes. That is none of the Commission’s business. I am a firm believer in subsidiarity, and this is a classic breach of that principle, unhelpful in the current context of the debate on the role of the Commission. It is entirely the Chancellor’s responsibility to deal with these matters.
That leads me on briefly to my third point—housing—which it is appropriate to mention in a debate on the economy, given the recent comment from the Governor of the Bank of England that the housing market posed the “biggest risk” to the UK’s economic recovery. There is recent evidence that the Help to Buy scheme is helping the housing market outside London, particularly for first-time buyers, and that the increase in house prices there may be easing. I believe that the way to tackle such excessive risk as there may be in the mortgage market is not by raising interest rates but rather by tackling it through a tighter approach to loans-to-incomes ratios, as the Financial Conduct Authority is now considering and Lloyds and RBS are now doing. It is a throwback to the regimes that we all knew when taking out our first mortgage. Prudence was imposed on us by relating the size of our mortgages to the incomes that we earned. But London is a special case. Here the continued rise in house prices is creating serious problems for many young people seeking to own their own homes. Partly, that is a reflection of the increasing numbers seeking to live and work in the capital and partly it is because the housing supply is failing to keep pace. I applaud the measures in the Queen’s Speech to deal with that.
An increasing contribution to the problem is the way in which the housing market in so much of central London is now dominated by soaring prices paid by foreign buyers. Of course, we must expect and welcome many foreign residents with high incomes living here in London if London is to remain a dominant international financial and business centre. But I am concerned that so many of the new developments in the centre of London and spreading out seem to be marketed first to very wealthy foreign purchasers seeking a safe haven for their investments and not regularly living here. That is having a considerable ripple effect, way beyond central London. All of us who live in London but not in the centre are experiencing that. I welcome the introduction in the Finance Bill of the measure that non-residents disposing of UK property should pay capital gains tax, but nevertheless my concern remains. I believe that the Government should continue to monitor that very carefully.
Finally and fourthly, I particularly welcome the proposal in the Queen’s Speech to,
“introduce a Bill to bolster investment in infrastructure and reform planning law to improve economic competitiveness”.
In particular, the Bill will,
“enhance the United Kingdom’s energy independence and security by opening up access to shale and geothermal sites and maximising North Sea resources”.
This measure was one of the proposals that the Economic Affairs Committee of this House recommended in its recent report, The Economic Impact on UK Energy Policy of Shale Gas and Oil. I believe that this is one of the most important reports the Economic Affairs Committee has published during my chairmanship of it. I ask the Minister to urge his colleagues to produce the government response in good time and well before the Summer Recess so that we can have a full debate on this issue as today I can outline only briefly some of the issues.
The committee was immensely impressed by the US experience over recent years in relation to shale gas and oil, which has transformed the American economy, lowered energy prices, produced substantial employment, caused a lot of the energy-intensive industries to consider going back to the United States and led it to export a great deal of coal to Europe, which is not the most environmentally beneficial form of energy. That American experience, which will not be repeated in full here, has been dramatic. Shale gas and oil could provide a huge opportunity for the UK, with lower energy prices, although not on the scale experienced in the United States, and greater energy security, which is particularly important in the context of what is happening in Ukraine. The development of shale gas and oil could retain energy-intensive industries in the UK and help to mitigate climate change as it is an effective carbon dioxide reduction measure. However, the problem is that progress is painfully slow. We are only just beginning to see applications to do exploratory drilling and we simply have no idea how much shale gas and oil can be produced in this country until we go ahead with exploratory drilling. We have not really started on the process. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, correctly pointed out, there are real risks of energy shortages and rising energy prices occurring in this country towards the end of this decade because of the reduction in coal-fired plants and the slowness of getting nuclear proposals through. Therefore, we urgently need to take full advantage now of the potential offered by shale gas and oil.
We identified the planning process as one of the main obstacles. We did not recommend that the regulatory environment should be weakened but we believe that the delays which arise in dealing with a multiplicity of agencies greatly inhibit companies that wish to exploit shale gas and oil. Therefore, streamlining is essential in that area. We examined a huge amount of scientific evidence, looked with great care at all the environmental and other objections, and concluded that all could be met, given our rigorous regulatory regimes. In short, shale gas and oil exploration is potentially a major opportunity for this country but we need to get on with it. This is a good first step in getting on with it but I ask my noble friend to ensure that we have a full debate on this subject before the Summer Recess, given its serious implications and great potential.
In conclusion, much of what is in the Queen’s Speech is very good and I warmly commend it.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, in this debate, I want to focus on one of the most understated aspects of the gracious Speech, which has already been referred to in passing by my noble friend Lord Adonis and the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor. It is, of course, housing. We were told that one of the themes of this year’s Queen’s Speech was to be aspiration. There is one thing to which we all surely aspire and that is decent homes for ourselves and our children. That aspiration has never been so far out of the reach of so many people, and the Queen’s Speech, I am afraid, does very little to make it a reality.
We were also told that this was to be a bold Queen’s Speech. There are very welcome references to garden cities, and isolated initiatives such as selling high-value government land and more Help to Buy, but they require close scrutiny and certainly do not add up in terms of scale, investment or coherence to what is so obviously needed. If this were to have been a bold strategy, it would have had to set out a full and proper vision and strategy for housing the nation—a clear prospectus for meeting the needs and ambitions of all communities, all tenures and all ages. To match the national mood of anxiety about housing, it should have been at the core of the text of the Queen’s Speech—not a series of marginalia—recognising the frustration in so many families as they watch prices and rents spiral out of control.
I had hoped today that we could debate housing within the wider context of the economy. It was disappointing that the Minister made such passing reference to housing, not even mentioning it in his list of infrastructures that drive the economy and should be prioritised. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, has wisely drawn attention to the real fears that by stoking the housing bubble in London there is a threat to a very fragile economic recovery. The London housing crisis exemplifies with brutal clarity the extent to which we have a not only dysfunctional but dangerous housing market, fuelled by policies focused largely on demand that have not impacted sufficiently on supply. Without being at all partisan, surely we can all agree that there is something seriously wrong with a housing policy whereby £23 billion is spent on housing benefit to subsidise housing costs and only £1.5 billion is spent on capital investment in social housing for those in greatest need.
“Crisis” is an overworked word but is justified in the context of London. Every day, as the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said, we see absentee millionaires’ flats rising on every available space in central London. I hope the Government will not only listen hard to the call for monitoring that process but think about the actions required to reduce it. Less visible are the families being driven out of London by the bedroom tax, or the young and professional families who are stuck in insecure and overpriced rented accommodation, with no hope of buying into the market or moving out of London. Young people are paying a fortune for the most appalling, shared rented accommodation. We in the last Government thought we had come close to solving the problems of homelessness and evictions by investing in homeless hostels and improving conditions. It turned out not to be the case. The national association of ALMOs reflected only yesterday that the percentage of rent arrears in households affected by the bedroom tax had increased from 37% to 69% by the end of June 2013, and is now about 27% above the base position.
To date the Government have tackled the housing crisis primarily through welfare restrictions and advantageous mortgage take-up. A fair and effective housing policy needs to plan to restore the balance of the housing market to meet the totality of housing needs. The fact is that while Help to Buy can help the few, help to build is the only way in which to help the many. What might a policy focused on help to build consist of? We need clarity and certainty around the number—an accelerated number—of new homes that we need to build, and how they would be financed and distributed across tenures. There is no mystery to the figures. By 2021 we will need to house an additional 221,000 households each year. We also know the price of failure. Almost 10 years ago to the day, Kate Barker spelled out the problem in her review of housing supply:
“I do not believe that continuing at the current rate of housebuilding is a realistic option, unless we are prepared to accept increasing problems of homelessness, affordability and social division … hampering our economic success”.
How very right she was, and she recommended an annual target of 230,000 new homes. In 2007, the last Government were building 170,000 a year, the highest rate for 19 years.
I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could clarify the agreed government target for housebuilding. Is it 200,000, as I understand the Housing Minister to have said, or is it 300,000, as some of her Liberal colleagues are saying? Does she agree that even the lower figure would demand a significant input from public and social providers? What proportion of that housebuilding target will be social housing? Does she agree that there is an indisputable economic case for social housing? This was reinforced recently by no less than PricewaterhouseCoopers, working with the London and Quadrant housing association, in a report called The Numbers Game. It clearly shows that, for those on lowest incomes and in the greatest need, housing at social rents offers the best deal, not just for tenants but for taxpayers and providers. That sort of evidence lends further volume to the chorus that is calling for the Government to remove the cap on the housing revenue account, which stops local authorities from building. That chorus is not just the usual suspects: it includes the Home Builders Federation and the CLG Select Committee. It is not a minority argument. In fact, the Government have already conceded the case: borrowing limits have already been raised by £150 million. That is a welcome recognition that the system is not fit for purpose. The logic is to abolish it altogether. Very handily, the Deregulation Bill is coming down the track into this House shortly. It is an obvious vehicle for doing this, which would kick-start more social housing.
The right reverend Prelate has called for more co-operation and partnership working at local level. How right he is. We need to see the LEPs working across boundaries. We need to see the sub-regional partnerships planning systematically for housing. We are making up so much ground that was already in place when we had regional spatial planning. It is a tragedy that we have to reinvent some of that.
Let me suggest a few more things the Government can do quickly, in the next year, to make help to build a reality. My heart sank when I heard of another reform of the planning system. We have only just had the guidance on the National Planning Policy Framework. More than anything else, planners need certainty in the system. They need to know what they will be able to invest in. Why do the Government not look, for example, at legislation to identify and free up land banks, which are deliberately being held back for long periods, to create the range of new delivery vehicles needed if the Government are serious about garden cities—not just garden cities, but good, high-quality, well designed urban extensions? Why do the Government not acknowledge that the new homes bonus has not led to an increase in building? They should go back and have a look at the housing and planning delivery grant, which was really effective.
Help to build also means taking the long view on the demography of this country and planning for a society that is growing older and occupying a lot of housing stock. There are not sufficient decent, high-quality homes for older people to move into. If we made that a priority, recognised that we are dealing with the whole community’s housing needs and integrated housing as the front line for decent health and care for elderly people, we would have a much more intelligent approach to housing and health and care.
The most urgent action is to help what Ed Miliband has called Generation Rent. My noble friend Lord Adonis referred to it as a lost generation, living in insecurity and with soaring costs in the private sector. These are young, vulnerable and exploited people, often in very low-paid jobs or unemployed. Despite being a supposed free market, private renting is a major cost to the taxpayer. It benefits from a patchwork of subsidies, guarantees and tax reliefs. It is the main driver behind the huge escalation in housing benefit. The next Labour Government have committed to build a modern rented sector, with sensible reforms around the core rights of consumers. We can look to other successful countries that are doing that, such as Germany. We can look to New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to build no fewer than 200,000 affordable units to rent. He has the support of the Real Estate Board of New York behind him, because it knows that a regulated market, properly done, has the self-interested support of the whole market. Why can we not do that in London, instead of letting the market rip?
Finally, there is time to do two things that can make a big difference. Legislation can still be brought forward this year to regulate letting agents and to extend the powers available to deal with rogue landlords. Those two immediate changes would help the most vulnerable. We have a year before the election. It is not too late to do any of that. Somehow I suspect we will have to wait for another Government to do it. I hope that will be a Labour Government, who will put different values and priorities into place.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, the guidance invites us today to discuss the economy, infrastructure, transport, energy and local government. As it happens, I want to discuss all those topics but as they apply to one particular place.
My full title is Lord McNally of Blackpool. I chose it in recognition of my pride and affection for that town and its immediate locality, the Fylde, where I grew up in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. In those days, Blackpool was one of the most successful holiday venues in Europe—an international centre for entertainment, with a hinterland supporting a diverse service and manufacturing base. It was an exciting place in which to grow up and one for which I retain an enduring affection. However, I am well aware that, although I retain many friends and family on the Fylde coast and although, as my son once shrewdly observed at the age of eight, “Daddy is always happier on a Saturday night when Blackpool have won”, I speak now as an exile of nearly 50 years.
My reason for using the opportunity of the gracious Speech to speak about Blackpool is that I worry that, without concerted effort by both local and national government, the town could reach a tipping point which would make regeneration impossible. I sometimes think that if Blackpool had had a manufacturing rather than a tourist-based economy, its need for help would have been more easily appreciated. If a mill, a pit, a steelworks or a shipyard closes down, the impact is more immediate and so is the response. Blackpool’s business is tourism, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, and my noble friend Lord Lee of Trafford have constantly argued with successive Governments, has never been given the priority it merits by dint of its capacity to create jobs and stimulate economic activity.
Over the past 30 years, Blackpool has had to deal with a variety of factors beyond its control, which together add up to the perfect storm. The decline of Britain’s old industrial base—the shipyards, the textile mills, the coal mines and the steelworks, to which I referred a minute ago—robbed Blackpool of its traditional holidaymaker market just at the time when those in the new and surviving industries were discovering package holidays and cheap flights to the sun. Blackpool is still Britain’s largest seaside resort, with iconic attractions such as the Tower, the Winter Gardens and the Pleasure Beach, which attract millions of visitors a year. However, unlike in my youth, most of those visitors are there for the day or the short term. This reduction in the length of visits has resulted in an oversupply of holiday accommodation. That, in turn, has resulted in many properties being converted into flats and houses for multiple occupation, which in turn become occupied by those on housing and other benefits. The result is high levels of social deprivation and poor housing conditions in parts of the town’s inner areas and an increasingly transient population, reinforcing social challenges.
The blunt fact is that Blackpool has had to spend a disproportionate amount of resources, manpower and energy responding to social care, health, housing and educational needs which are not of its making. This, in turn, diverts resources and energy from the task of revitalising the visitor economy and improving the housing stock and local environment so that the town becomes once again an attractive place to visit and in which to live. Blackpool urgently needs a coherent and co-ordinated programme of measures which will reverse the decline and create a benign circle of confidence and growth. I know that the Government are in the process of considering a strategic economic plan drawn up by the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership. I urge the Government, when they respond next month, to do so with a sense of urgency and imagination.
I have to say that I believe a great opportunity was missed when Blackpool was rejected as the location for a super-casino. It is ironic that Blackpool was refused a super-casino, which is probably the most thoroughly regulated of all gambling outlets, while Parliament waved through new opportunities to gamble from the ease of one’s own sofa or when strolling down the local high street. I still believe that the casino option should be revisited to revitalise the economy and to use Blackpool’s unique brand name to create a multi-activity resort, as has happened with many successful regenerations around the world.
Even after the disappointment of the casino decision, Blackpool has pressed ahead with a wide range of initiatives which I believe require a positive response from the Government. There is the proposal for a museum to celebrate Blackpool’s unique contribution to entertainment, and proposals for an energy academy. Work is already under way on refurbishments to Blackpool Tower and the Winter Gardens. The promenade has been upgraded and redesigned, new trams run on re-laid track, and the Pleasure Beach continues to provoke terror and delight with rides of space-age technology. I pay tribute to the town’s two MPs, Gordon Marsden MP and Paul Maynard MP, for their assiduous fight on the town’s behalf.
The Lancashire Enterprise Partnership measure to which I referred is before the Government as we speak, and the outcome is expected in July. If approved it will result in much-needed improvements to Blackpool’s economy and the creation of new jobs, with transport proposals to improve access to Blackpool’s tourist attractions and the arrival points to the town, a new major visitor attraction and the establishment of a new energy skills headquarters, as well as plans to address the quality and choice of housing on offer.
This is all good news but it must be the beginning and not the end of a process. The Government need, at long last, to give tourism the priority that it deserves. There is also a need for a holistic approach to the development of this coastal region. I wonder whether there is not a case for revisiting the concept of a City of the Fylde from the Wyre to the Ribble to tackle some of these issues. I mentioned earlier the very strong industrial history of the Fylde. I heard what the Minister said about the shale gas industry and the comments and observations from my noble friend Lord MacGregor. What I say now is only a personal observation, but I believe that if there is a region where fracking could be done safely and successfully it is west Lancashire, with its long association with the chemical industry, with British Nuclear Fuels and with offshore gas and wind. There is an industrial tradition on the west coast which could very quickly be revived. I was delighted to learn that the site of the old ICI works at Burn Naze, where my father worked for 47 years, is again a growth point for the manufacture of polymers and chemicals.
Higher education also has a part to play, and I am pleased that Fylde College and Lancaster University continue to co-operate to ensure that the sub-region has the required skills to match the needs of a regenerating economy. I have already referred to the idea of an energy centre of excellence, which would further strengthen the educational base.
I know that the Cities Minister, my right honourable friend Greg Clark, has visited the town and taken a personal interest in Blackpool and its future. I would like him now to do a “Heseltine” and make a personal commitment to Blackpool’s future or, even better, dispatch the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, to Blackpool with an “action this day” brief to get things moving. When Alderman Bickerstaff visited the Paris Great Exhibition in 1890 and saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time, he said “We’ll have one of them”, and we did. When the opportunity came to levy a cultural rate in the 1920s, Blackpool used the money to fund the illuminations, which are still going strong and delighting millions every year. That spirit is still there. Not for nothing is the town’s motto “Progress”.
Because I have retained my Blackpool accent I am often asked where I come from. When I say Blackpool, there is inevitably an outpouring of fond memories of days of fresh air and fun, particularly the fun. That positive name recognition and good will is still there but Blackpool needs a little help from its friends. The building blocks of recovery are all there. A good deal of groundwork has been done. There now is a need for a positive approach from government which will turn opportunities into realities. I look forward to my noble friend’s response.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and his hymn of love to his native city. As a Liverpudlian, I fondly recall visiting Blackpool routinely as a child and less fondly watching Stanley Matthews give us a display of how to play football in the second football match I saw as a child.
In 2008, the UK economy suffered a body blow. At long last, we are beginning to recover, but our bounce back has been slower than other leading economies. Moreover, it will be 2018 before we are again, as a nation, in fiscal balance. Our debt levels are now, and will remain for some time, among the highest in the world. It will be a generation before they return to prior levels, always assuming that we will have responsible Governments in the future willing to work to that goal. All parties standing at the next election will, I hope, set out their plans for returning our national debt to historical and defensible levels.
Our lengthy recession has had manifold adverse consequences, as we are all aware. Many individuals and businesses have moved backwards in their fortunes. Responsible savers are paid minuscule rates of interest, well below the rate of inflation, yet still pay tax on the proceeds—punished twice over for their prudence. Even the best-run economies were affected by the global recession, but the UK’s difficulties were intensified: first, by a large financial sector, parts of which, as we all know, were infected by an ingrained culture of risk-taking and greed, making casino bets with their clients’ money; and, secondly, by a failure of government correctly to forecast tax revenues and tailor the level of public spending accordingly. On the one hand, regulation of the finance sector failed us; and on the other, the institutions of government proved inadequate to the task of managing our public finances. Changing the culture and behaviour of a whole industry is not a trivial task, but let us cross our fingers that the new financial regulation reforms will work.
The OBR is a welcome new institutional fixture of manifest independence and integrity. Alongside an independent Bank of England—another welcome reform of recent times—the OBR, if it is retained and respected by future Governments, should prevent political hopefulness and opportunism once again tipping over into recklessness. Yet one fatal imbalance in our economy has not been addressed: for 40 or 50 years, like a badly run business, the UK has consumed too much and invested too little.
Public investment in the UK as a share of GDP is consistently below that of other countries. Unsurprisingly, there is a clear correlation between countries with excellent infrastructure and national competitiveness. The UK lags behind the rest of the world, as once we led it, in creating modern infrastructure and—surprise, surprise—our national productivity trails our competitors too. We know that we allowed our Victorian water and sewerage infrastructure to decay, that we were slow off the blocks with broadband, that we have procrastinated over power generation for the past two decades, and that we have by far the most congested roads and underinvested road and rail infrastructure of any major country. The cold statistics speak for themselves, but each of us can make brutal comparisons whenever we travel to competitor countries. It is shameful but characteristic that we did not long ago resolve how to deal with chronic undercapacity at Heathrow, one of the UK’s most prized strategic assets.
Last year’s Treasury document, Investing in Britain’s Future, was a list of directionally sound projects, but it was neither a vision nor a plan for modernising our creaking, crumbling, unfit-for-purpose national infrastructure within the span of a generation. I greatly respect the record of the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, and I do not for a moment doubt his good intentions, so I will look keenly at the plan he outlined earlier to see how far it goes towards meeting those long-term goals. As a nation, we need to resolve to set aside 3.5% of GDP annually for investment, which is the long-term OECD average. We have been so far below 3.5% for so long—we are currently at something like 1% to 2%—that we probably need to spend 4% to 5% of GDP on our infrastructure for at least 20 years simply to catch up with other nations.
We also need some formal mechanism to embed a long-term commitment on investment into our budgeting, and perhaps in her concluding remarks the Minister will tell us what share of GDP the newly announced infrastructure plan implies over the next five to 10 years. For decades, Governments of all kinds have promised investment but have then short-sightedly cut it at the first sign of economic reverse, most recently vouchsafing in late 2008 that capital spend would be protected—I quote the Treasury of the time—“to support the long-term productivity and competitiveness of the UK economy”, only to see the capital budget savaged, cut by almost half, in the period from 2009 to 2011.
We should continue the process of remedying the long-standing weaknesses in the governance of our economy and, alongside the OBR and an independent central bank, create a new institution of some kind that will depoliticise long-term infrastructure investment. Projects, as we know, can take decades to gestate, plan and deliver. We need an organisation that will bring together the main political parties in order to forge and stand behind a consensus about our national infrastructure. HS2 and the skilful cross-party work of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, offer us some hope that this might be achieved. Let us complete an institutional framework that will stabilise our economy, improve our productivity and end the catastrophic dislocations that have plagued us on and off for half a century, and which have substantially reduced our economic performance as a nation and prevented this creative and enterprising country from achieving its full potential.
Baroness Noakes (Con)
My Lords, four years ago, the Government inherited an economy on its knees. We had emerged from the most severe recession in post-war history. We had a big structural deficit. Government debt was more than 60% of GDP and rising. The previous Government had no plans to deal with this. They left an uncompetitive economy and tax system with a corporation tax rate of 28% and a top personal rate of 50%. It has been a long haul over the past four years to restore the economy to something that resembles health. The job is far from over, but there is a lot to rejoice about. The economy really is growing again—and at the fastest rate in the developed world. Unemployment is falling rapidly and real disposable incomes are starting to rise again. I am sure that the Benches opposite will join me in rejoicing that manufacturing industry, which suffered so much under the previous Government, is now firmly on an upward trajectory. My right honourable friend the Chancellor was wise to reduce the deficit largely through expenditure reductions rather than taxation, and he was wise to ignore the Keynesian sirens calling for more spending and more borrowing.
On the downside, the deficit remains stubbornly high and it is not a cause of celebration that the debt to GDP ratio will peak at nearly 80%. There is still an absolute necessity to continue to bear down on government spending. The Government have played a difficult hand very well, but there are of course some things that they could have done better. Our energy policy is still a mess. We have the self-inflicted wounds of environmental policies that load costs onto British businesses and on to vulnerable consumers. We need some common sense on how much this country is prepared to pay for green luxuries. I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market said about the potential for shale to transform our economy, but dealing with underground access to shale resources in the Infrastructure Bill is but a small part of what the Government need to do to get this moving. Like my noble friend, I look forward to the government response to the report of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on this.
There is also much work still to do on reducing regulatory burdens. There is only so much that we can do in the UK, so we will have to take the fight to Europe—and the sooner we get into serious negotiations over our membership of the EU and its terms the better.
However, my main topic today is taxation. It was wonderful to hear in the gracious Speech that the Government would continue to cut taxes. My right honourable friend the Chancellor has done much good work already. I will single out two things in particular: the path to the lowest rate of corporation tax in the developed world and the reduction in the top rate of income tax. However, the Government get few points for tax simplification. The Office of Tax Simplification was a great idea and has done excellent work, but its recommendations have not all been heeded, and more than 2,000 pages of complex tax legislation will have been added to our tax code by the end of this Parliament.
The Chancellor has shown his capacity for radical thinking with his excellent pension reforms, announced in this year’s Budget. I look forward to the pensions tax Bill delivering those reforms. What the country now needs is a similar reforming mindset applied to the tax system. I draw noble Lords’ attention to a substantial report on a single income tax, produced two years ago by the 2020 Tax Commission, which was sponsored by the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Institute of Directors. It echoes the conclusions of work done by my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean’s Tax Reform Commission over eight years ago. The report recommended that most taxes should be abolished and replaced with a new single tax on income. This major simplification would replace the existing income tax, national insurance, corporation tax and various capital taxes including inheritance tax. For good measure, it would get rid of the detested air passenger duty.
The commission recommended a single 30% tax rate on income plus a total restraint on taxes as a percentage of national income of around one-third. The essential argument for a low-tax regime is that high taxes act as a drag on the potential of the economy. The 2020 Tax Commission estimates that its proposals would add over 9% to GDP over 15 years. Importantly, the annual growth rate would permanently be increased by around 0.4%. These potential prizes are too great to ignore.
The Tax Commission’s analysis included dynamic modelling carried out for it by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. This is the key. Many of us were delighted that the Chancellor used dynamic modelling to underpin the reductions in corporation tax last year and the recent cut in fuel duty—so far, so good. What we really need the Treasury to do is move towards using dynamic modelling as a way of life. It is good to use dynamic modelling for specific taxes but the Treasury should be using it to understand how to drive the tax system to support the whole economy. Traditional modelling methods will inevitably produce incremental rather than radical approaches to policy. If the analysis of the 2020 Tax Commission of a single low rate of tax is even half-true, the Treasury simply has to embrace it.
Of course, analysing the impact of a radical tax change is one thing and implementing it is another. It is not easy in an advanced economy such as ours to re-engineer the tax system in a short period of time. There have to be transitions to avoid destabilising the economy and harming individuals. There is the underlying paradox that if you take a long time over transition and overprotect the status quo, you will not see the benefits of higher growth, which is the aim. So there is a case for boldness.
I can see why the Government might shy away from wholesale restructuring, as proposed by the 2020 Tax Commission. It does seem pretty scary. But I do not understand why the Government are not pressing ahead with one key element of the tax commission changes: namely, merging national insurance with income tax. This has a growing body of support. The Office of Tax Simplification proposed it in its review of small business taxation; the Institute for Fiscal Studies supports it; and surveys of businesses show strong support.
Informed commentators know that national insurance is a tax in all but name, but the one thing that has managed to keep it alive is that it is the ultimate stealth tax. Gordon Brown knew that when he raised the extra 1%, allegedly for the NHS—and it seems that Mr Miliband is thinking about trying the same wheeze if he gets a shot at running the country. I find it extraordinary that the Exchequer Secretary has used the Beveridge notion of the contributing principle as the rationale for keeping them separate. Expecting citizens to contribute in return for qualifying for benefits is fine, but you do not need the fiction of a separate national insurance fund to achieve that. The time has come to be honest about national insurance. No one pretends that merging the two systems is a walk in the park. There are many legal and administrative hurdles to overcome. But the prize is great if we want a simpler tax system.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
What would my noble friend do about the problem of pension income, which is not subject to national insurance?
Baroness Noakes
I was about to say that the TaxPayers’ Alliance produced a very thoughtful report, which showed how a transition could be made within five years and could also protect the expectations of pensioners at the same time. There is a way of doing it. All I would say to my noble friend and to noble Lords generally is that it can be done—it just needs a Government with the will to do it.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. Tempted as I am to engage in the tax debate, I think I ought to stick to my prepared script and talk about local authorities.
In last month’s local elections, more than 4,000 individuals were elected in England to serve on some 160 local authorities of one description or another. Many would have been re-elected and some elected to serve for the first time. The democratic process delivered joy for some and despair for others, but for my party it delivered more than 300 more councillors and control of 82 councils. As the largest grouping on the LGA, it now falls to us to provide its chair, Councillor David Sparks, the first Labour councillor to become chair since my noble friend Lord Beecham. I propose to take this opportunity to reflect briefly on the challenges for those councillors—those continuing and those just elected—as they make their declaration of office and see what, if anything, planned for the new Session is designed to help them.
The scene has been very much set by the outgoing chair of the LGA, the Conservative Sir Merrick Cockell, who described councils as being at a tipping point, warning that council services are at breaking point. He has been reported as declaring that the current funding arrangements will not see us through for very much longer and expressed concern about the running down or wholesale closure of services such as libraries, road maintenance, school support schemes and youth clubs. We know that local authority spending on adult social care has already been cut by £1.8 billion since 2009-10, and there are 300,000 care workers on zero-hours contracts. That is before we have to face the big issues referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester.
As we have debated before, funding for local government overall has been cut by 40% during this Parliament—bigger and earlier cuts than those to any other part of the public sector—but it is the distribution of those cuts that shows the true nature of this Government. Poorer communities have been disproportionately hit, as evidenced by the fact that the 10 most deprived local authority areas lose 10 times the amount of spending power per household compared to the 10 least deprived local authorities. Liverpool gets a 27% reduction in spending power per household, while Surrey and Wokingham get an increase—so much for creating a fairer society.
At a time when we hear the Lib Dem wing of the coalition boasting about how many people they have taken out of income tax by raising the personal allowance, and Eric Pickles asserting that councils have a moral duty not to increase council tax bills, we know that hundreds of thousands of poor people are having big increases in their council tax bills because of the localisation of council tax support—delegating responsibilities but cynically not providing adequate funding. That is just one of the dilemmas confronting elected members: should they charge the poor to help pay for the very poor or should they cut services further? In the mean time, more households are being summonsed for non-payment and more are experiencing the heavy hand of the bailiffs.
If we believe that the impact on the poor is an unfortunate oversight, the plans to withdraw specific funding for local welfare provision—the successor to the discretionary Social Fund—tells us otherwise. Of course, the iniquitous bedroom tax, which we will repeal, is yet further evidence of a Government who neither understand nor care about the misery their measures are inflicting on vulnerable families.
Councillors are on the front line of having to deal with the consequences of one of the coalition's biggest policy failures, touched on by my noble friend Lady Andrews: housing. Despite a plethora of announcements and initiatives, housebuilding has been at its lowest in peacetime since the 1920s, with the number of affordable homes built last year dropping by 26%. The NAO concluded that there was little evidence, for example, that the new homes bonus has yet to make significant changes to local authorities’ behaviour in increasing housing supply.
We know that under the coalition Government, homelessness is up, rough sleeping is up and the number of families with children living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation has reached a 10-year high. Housing deprivation has ramifications across other council services. Switching government funding from investing in new homes to subsidising housing costs with housing benefit means that central government now spends more than 20 times as much on housing benefit as on building grants to support the provision of new affordable homes—as things stand, a trend that will continue.
We have seen some revival of council house building, generally led by Labour authorities, but overall, as we have heard, we are building fewer than half the new homes needed to fulfil demand, let alone to deal with the backlog. To be fair, it is not a new phenomenon and successive Governments have failed to build at the rate we once did. As a result of all that, more and more people are being locked out of home ownership and are living in the private rented sector. Across England, a quarter of adults under the age of 35 are living in their childhood bedroom. There are now 4 million households in the private rented sector, of which 1.3 million are families with children, and nearly 5 million people on local authority waiting lists. The average cost of rents has gone up by 13% since 2010 and renting is now the most expensive tenure, with renters spending on average 41% of their income on rents. Many face unpredictable rent hikes, while high and unpredictable costs are made worse by the uncertainty and insecurity of short-term tenancies of six to 12 months.
All this is helping to fuel the cost of living crisis and directly impacting on business competitiveness, especially in London. That is why we need to change legislation to make three-year tenancies the default in the market, as the Government’s voluntary approach is inadequate. We would also provide for an upper ceiling on rent increases during the tenancy, but with negotiated market rents as the starting point. There is more. We will stop tenants being hit by rip-off fees from letting agents and regulate residential lettings and managing agents to protect tenants and landlords. We will also introduce a national register of landlords and make it easier for local authorities to introduce licensing in their area, to drive standards up and rogue landlords out.
Nothing in the Government’s programme announced yesterday touches on these issues or acknowledges the problem, and nothing addresses the fundamental problems in the housing market or matches our commitment to build 200,000 homes a year by the end of the next Parliament. There is the commitment to legislate for development of a new garden city at Ebbsfleet and, as far as it goes, that is to be welcomed. However, there is a failure to ensure the provision of affordable housing or other garden city principles in that development, and the number of homes announced is some 5,000 fewer than were originally announced in 2012. The proposed reforms to planning to support small builders are ones that we could support but we will have to examine the detail. However, there is nothing to address the more deep-seated problems with the current planning system. No effective action is proposed to stop developers hoarding land with planning permission and nothing addresses the weakness in the planning system of the duty to co-operate, which is denying some local authorities the right to grow.
An incoming Government in 2015 will not be able to turn back the clock on funding but they could address the fairness in distributing the resources available. Labour councils and others are already meeting the challenges of austerity in many ways and more can be done if we build on the model of city deals throughout local government. It is crucial that we support councils to deliver economic growth in all areas of the country. This means devolving real power from Whitehall to towns and cities so that working together with local businesses—as in the city deals, where it is good that 24 have been agreed to date—they can take responsibility for transport, housing, jobs and skills and economic development. We need to be radical in breaking down the barriers to integrated working, including ending Whitehall’s silo mentality.
The Local Government Innovation Taskforce set up by Ed Miliband is looking at how Labour in local government is already innovating and responding to the challenges that our communities face. In some of the councils where we made gains last month, it is possible to see what is on the agenda. Priorities are being set locally: in Crawley, Labour will require 40% of new housing to be affordable, for example, while the priority for Croydon is to make it a living wage borough. Getting money out of the centre, from Whitehall to the town hall, is essential if we are to rebuild confidence in the power of people working together to create a future that is right for them and their communities. So, from the safety of this unelected House, I say to all those elected councillors: when the euphoria of election fades and the scale of the challenge emerges, keep the faith. Local councillors have a vital role to play for their towns and cities, their communities and, indeed, their country.
Lord Palumbo of Southwark (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to contribute to this debate on the Government’s programme for the coming year. The country’s financial position is, of course, central to this programme. Current UK Government debt is approaching 100% of GDP. Household debt is roughly the same. Financial sector debt is more than double this amount, due to the historically large size of our banking industry. Then there are off-balance-sheet issues such as private finance initiatives and unfunded pensions. I appreciate that it is a matter of opinion as to whether these should be included as liabilities of the state but if the country were to account like a business, they would be. These add perhaps another 200% of GDP to our debt. Economists differ as to our total debt amount but on any basis we must be approaching 500% of GDP, which makes Britain one of the most indebted countries in the world.
Over the past four years, the Government have made heroic efforts to combat the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis. While opinions might differ as to the wisdom and effect of quantitative easing and other stimulus programmes, the Government have steadied the financial ship. The problem is that despite the austerity narrative, public spending continues to rise and our debts continue to grow. Then there are a number of other issues thrown into the political mix such as Scottish independence, immigration and Europe, which perhaps distract from the key fiscal debate. Beyond this, it is a very difficult debate to have because it involves cutbacks to the way we live and, as your Lordships know, human beings are hard-wired to avoid pain. Who will vote for that and which politician will put pain centre stage in their manifesto?
There are many opinions on how to deal with our economic problems. I know that I am inexperienced in politics and your Lordships need no lessons in “a better way of doing things” from me. Alas, as a businessman, I have no other frame of reference. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge from the Economist recently published a book, The Fourth Revolution. In it they drew lessons from the Asian economic model, in particular from Singapore. These lessons provide some interesting ideas, including: a system for educating public administrators from an early age and paying them generously—in business terms, hiring the best; a more robust system for social welfare with higher contributions from individuals and businesses; more emphasis on self-reliance and, most of all, long-term business planning. I appreciate that Singapore operates under a different political system and that some of its methods would be difficult to apply in western democracies. However, the country’s success rather speaks for itself. We have also seen western countries such as Sweden adopt Singaporean-type methods, such as the tight fiscal rules which reduced Sweden’s debt from 70% to 37% of GDP in fewer than 20 years.
I understand that there is tremendous nuance in this area of debate. It is all too easy to sound off and there are no easy answers. However, we must plan for some bumps in the road ahead, such as when rates normalise or we have further political uncertainty. I sincerely hope and expect our recovery to gather pace but if it should falter, we may need to consider more stringent business methods with which to run our lives.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I thought that your Lordships might welcome a maiden speech as a kind of interlude in the midst of today’s business. I am most grateful for the welcome that I have received in your Lordships’ House since my introduction on, of all auspicious days, April Fools’ Day. I am particularly grateful for the courtesy, kindness and helpfulness shown by the Lord Speaker, Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments and their staff.
I enter your Lordships’ House as Bishop of Rochester and thus, in a sense, I represent parts of Kent and south-east London which were for a time predominantly Saxon, if tradition is to be believed, in contrast to the Jutes who inhabited east Kent. For most people, such historic divisions have disappeared along with the history of early medieval times, but of course we in the Church of England hold strongly to our historic divisions, even sometimes holding them with affection, and to this day a great gulf therefore continues to be fixed down the middle of Kent in ecclesiastical terms between the diocese of Rochester and the diocese of Canterbury—it outdates us by a mere seven years.
More seriously, I come to your Lordships also as bishop to prisons, a role that I have recently inherited from the former Bishop of Liverpool who I know brought care, commitment and intelligence to that role both within your Lordships’ House and more widely in the nation. It is a role that I have accepted with enthusiasm and some modest knowledge, not least because I am married to someone who has spent a great deal of the past few years in prison—in her professional capacity, I hasten to add. The title of “bishop to prisons” notwithstanding, the brief covers most of the criminal justice and penal affairs world. In that regard, I look forward to engaging, within the life of your Lordships’ House, with matters such as the proposals for secure colleges, which merit some serious thought and attention, and others that no doubt will be touched on in this House next week.
As an aside, I was aware in some of the reporting of the gracious Speech, or rather its televising, of the continued observations that I am part of an all-male Bench. One of the tasks that I carry at the moment is to take before the General Synod in July this year the draft Measure that would bring that position to an end, and I suppose that I crave your Lordships’ encouragement in those matters later this year.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester
Having been what one might call a jobbing vicar for 23 years, I come to your Lordships’ House with that background. My journey has taken me from living and working in inner-city Birmingham for a number of years and then in more suburban parts of that city to rural north and west Norfolk and, now, within the very mixed socioeconomic geography of north and west Kent and south-east London. In each of those rather varied settings I have found myself drawn to, among other things, a particular interest in and engagement with issues around housing and homelessness. Having served for some 20 years on the boards of housing associations, first in the city of Birmingham and then in East Anglia, and now chairing the trustees of Housing Justice, which is the national ecumenical voice of the churches on these matters, I expect also to take a particular interest in these issues within the work of the House.
A number of speakers in this debate—the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lords, Lord MacGregor and Lord McKenzie—have touched at some length on issues to do with housing. I hope that it is not thought too controversial for what is meant to be an uncontroversial maiden speech if I touch on some of those matters again. It is hard at present to go even 24 hours without being aware of some comment, research report, announcement or other public contribution on housing-related matters; reference has already been made today to the recent intervention of the Bank of England, and there have been many others. At some point, housing-related questions impinge at almost every level on discussions around the economy, family life, community well-being, societal cohesion, welfare policy and much more besides.
Living and working in rural Norfolk for six years, I became aware of the pressing need for small-scale affordable housing developments in villages. They are essential to sustain the diversity and vitality of such places—their community infrastructure, as it were—not least by enabling local younger people to remain in their communities and to be economically active in those places. In the south-east, where I am now, an area dominated by the London housing market, as we have heard, there is a similar need for housing to be available to those working in the lower-waged sectors of the economy—sectors that are vital for that economy. We have heard of the huge pressure on housing, both for purchase and for rent, in the south-east. In our socially disadvantaged communities across the nation, there is a simple need for decent places to live at prices that can be afforded in communities where support networks and opportunities for training and employment are also close at hand.
Why do these things concern me as a bishop, or indeed simply as a human being? Because at a very deep level our human well-being is bound up with our sense of belonging and identity—and, our sense of the global notwithstanding, belonging and identity are in turn bound up with our sense of locatedness and, more specifically, of what we might call home. For those like me who draw inspiration from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we find in the Hebrew prophets a vision of a person sitting in security beneath their vine and their fig tree, with no one to make them afraid, and at another point there is the encouragement, even when finding oneself in a strange place, to build homes, settle down and plant productive vineyards. These are visions of settledness, locatedness and security. “Home” in that sense is of course about much more than bricks, mortar and roof tiles, but certainly in our culture, and perhaps more specifically in our weather, to think of home without adequate and affordable bricks, mortar and roof tiles is very hard indeed.
As we have heard, the Government’s programme for this Parliament, as outlined yesterday, touches on housing matters at a number of points. There is the expression of a continuing aspiration to increase housing supply by means of reforms of various kinds, including to the planning system, about which we have also heard; initiatives such as the garden cities, the first one of which, at Ebbsfleet, will be in my diocese; and support for small housebuilding firms. Alongside this, there is the intention to see new homes built to a zero-carbon standard although, while I welcome that, the big issue is of course the retrofitting of existing homes to those sorts of standards, which is far more difficult.
I await the outcomes of all this with interest because, as I think we all know and acknowledge, there is an awfully long way to go regarding housing supply, markets for housing both for purchase and for rent, and many other issues connected with housing in one way or another. I am well aware that the issues are complex, having worked in the field in one way or another for 25 years, and that there are no easy answers, but I cannot rest content for as long as there are those without somewhere to call home and, more sharply, without security in relation to the shelter over their head. I trust that Her Majesty’s Government will continue to give these matters focused attention for they are foundational, yes, for the economy, but also for our individual, familial and societal well-being.
Lest it be thought that people like me talk about these things and then simply sit back and expect others to make things happen, I would point out that the churches are not inactive in this field. Our work at the sharper end of homelessness, often of course in partnership with others of good will, is well known: winter shelters, advice centres, day care and the like. But it goes further than that: there is, for example, under the umbrella of Housing Justice, the organisation that I chair, a project that we call Faith in Affordable Housing. Developed over recent years, this helps to make church-owned land and property available for development for affordable housing purposes. The resulting developments are small scale but are beginning to emerge in both England and Wales, in urban and rural settings. We need more such initiatives. As well as legislation and policy, we need imagination, creativity, a properly entrepreneurial spirit and a restless passion for what is right and good for the future of our society in this regard. This is for the well-being of us all—and, more particularly, for that of our children and our children’s children.
Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)
My Lords, it is a particular pleasure for me to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester on, if I may say so, a very attractive and persuasive maiden speech. Housing is certainly a very important issue, as a number of speakers on all sides of the debate have made clear today. The right reverend Prelate, as he explained, brings very special knowledge and experience in that regard to our debates, and we will very much welcome that.
He has also talked about his work in prisons. That is an enormously important area for the work of the churches, in order to help the prisoners when they come to be released back into the community and hope for their redemption. He did not mention one of his interests, which is urban regeneration. I spent some years at the Department of the Environment dealing with those problems, and I have no doubt that the right reverend Prelate will bring much wisdom to our debates.
I have to tell the House that the right reverend Prelate is very keen on choral singing. As a founder member of the Parliament Choir, I hope he may be persuaded—although I think it somewhat unlikely—to attend the weekly rehearsals and sing in one of the choir’s performances. Perhaps that is asking too much.
It is a particular pleasure to me to be able to welcome the right reverend Prelate’s maiden speech as I have a brother and a son who are in the church and I draw considerable benefit from their advice, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester well knows from what has been said in recent years. I say to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester that we all very much look forward to the contributions he will make to our debates in the future.
A number of speakers have already touched on the Infrastructure Bill, and I join my noble friend Lord MacGregor in congratulating my noble friend Lord Deighton on his speech and on what he had to say about that subject. We all await the development of the very exciting proposals which he outlined to the House.
On the subject of energy, there will be not only the infrastructure proposals directly. As the gracious Speech noted, we are going to see measures to implement the electricity reforms which were legislated in the previous Session under the Energy Act 2013. Rather unusually, the gracious Speech referred to what in practice will amount to delegated legislation which is involving much activity by DECC. I had a Question down two days before Prorogation and miraculously it was answered by the Minister before we prorogued. I was very pleased about that. My noble friend Lady Verma outlined the programme for the EMR secondary legislation:
“It is the Government’s intention that these regulations will be laid before the House at the beginning of June 2014 and published concurrently”.—[Official Report, 14/5/14; col. WA508.]
Well, time has slipped, as I learnt yesterday that it is now going to be towards the end of June. I hope that is not a harbinger of other delays in future. There will also be a number of responses to consultations that have been issued over recent months, and it is quite clear that the department has a great deal to do. It means that this House will also have a lot to do in dealing with that delegated legislation.
Among the issues which we will be considering is another matter that is left over and about which the Minister has not had a reply. It is the application to the European Commission for state aid approval for the various measures in the electricity market reforms. The first being considered in detail at the moment is the application for the nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Those of us who took part in the debates on the Energy Bill were encouraged to write to the Commission and express our support for the application in the hope that the Commission would approve it. I duly wrote and stressed that the Government’s electricity market reforms are vital to allow essential investment in new low-carbon generation of all types to come forward. One does not often get acknowledgements from government departments, but I had a very handsome formal acknowledgement from the Commission and I have no doubt that others who wrote in did as well. I made it clear, and it is certainly true, that EDF and its partner firms need clear and timely approval from the Commission that the arrangements that have been agreed with the Government and are now the subject of legislation are compatible with the state aid rules. The Competition Directorate has completed its consultation, and we have been assured by Commissioner Almunia that he intends to decide the case during his term of office, which ends later this year. There must be no delays to this progress. Our margins are getting very slender, and although the nuclear power station will not be operative until the early 2020s, other investment will need to go forward and we need the approvals to enable that to happen.
In particular, I want to mention the capacity market. The measure in the Act is the framework intended to ensure that we have investment in electricity generating capacity, particularly to help to keep the lights on when the wind does not blow. Regulations, which are awaited with keen interest, have been the subject of fierce negotiation between the industry and DECC. It is now looking as if what comes forward will meet most of the representations that have been made by potential investors. Last month, I had a very helpful letter from the Minister for Energy, my right honourable friend Michael Fallon, in which he spelled out the measures that are likely to be in these regulations. This House will want to look at them very carefully when they are issued to make sure that they achieve what is required.
The capacity market also has to be approved by the EU Commission and is the subject of a separate application under the state aid rules. It has been difficult to find out where the application has got to, but yesterday I had an answer from my noble friend. In advance of her letter, her office very kindly answered my question about the process and timing of that state aid approval and stated:
“We have engaged with the Commission since the start of the policy development process and continue to do so. Discussions with the Commission are at an advanced stage and the Commission is fully aware of our deadlines. At present, we do not foresee any delay and our plans for the first auction in December remain on track ... A delay is not currently anticipated”.
We shall want to watch this very carefully. There have been huge delays in the investment programmes so far, and we cannot afford any more. We are facing very narrow margins over the next two or three years, and this urgent gas-fired investment will be essential to keep the lights on.
The gracious Speech foreshadowed the Infrastructure Bill, which had its First Reading this morning. As my noble friend Lord MacGregor made clear, it includes measures to ease the path for the development of shale gas and oil and geothermal energy. It is interesting that the consultation paper that has been issued covers both almost in parallel because they raise exactly the same issue of deep drilling. Shale gas involves horizontal drilling, which is part of the technology. A lot is known about this because of the consultation paper that has been issued. There has been quite a lot of consultation with stakeholders in recent months. I agree with my noble friend Lord MacGregor that this implements the recommendation that came from his Economic Affairs Committee. Like him, I hope we shall have a response to that very soon so that we can debate in the House that hugely important report. Suffice it to say that the report sets out in detail the very great economic benefit that will accrue to this country from the successful exploitation of this energy source. Of course it must be safe, and of course the environment must be protected, but the evidence that was given to that committee shows that, in fact, that is all entirely possible.
Why do we need this new provision? When I was reading law at university more years ago than I care to remember, I was taught that the common law of England provided that the ownership of land—I shall eschew the Latin, because I know it is out of order—roughly translated, carries ownership of the space up to the heavens and down to Hades. Of course, the minerals below that have long since been nationalised and therefore do not belong to the landowner, unlike in America where they still do. The right to use the space is still that of the owners. Below 300 metres—the figure in the consultation paper—it really can be of absolutely no practical use to the landowner at all. Yet some of the opponents of fracking have threatened to buy strips of land all around so that they can stop the exploitation of shale gas simply by saying, “Sorry, you cannot go through our land”. The Government have made it clear that this is of huge importance to the economy of this country and in helping Europe as a whole to become less dependent on imported sources of gas. I will warmly support the proposal in this Bill.
However, there seems to be a question of timing. The consultation was launched last month and is not due to end until August, in the long recess. Are we really going to debate this Bill and the clauses in it without knowing whether it will in fact be approved by the Government and without having seen the Government’s response to the report? I find this quite difficult. It would be helpful if something could be said about that when the Minister winds up.
It was suggested at one point that this Parliament would have very little to do in its last Session. However, as my noble friend Lord Razzall and others have said, that simply is not true. We are going to be extremely busy, and I warmly welcome the gracious Speech.
Lord Giddens (Lab)
My Lords, I also congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester on his excellent maiden speech, which was both forceful and charming—two qualities which are hard to merge. I hope that the right reverend Prelate enjoyed the reference to “up to the heavens and down to Hades”, because that is the way we speak in the House of Lords.
I have recently, after many years, been rereading Marx. After all, capitalism is in the middle of probably the biggest crisis that it has experienced in its existence, because it is now a global system. Here are one or two choice quotes which I dug out from Marx:
“just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the … long-term dynamism of capitalism itself”.
Here is another juicy little quote:
“Capitalism loses its sense of moderation when the belief in the power of the market enters the realm of faith”.
The net result, Marx concluded, is revolution.
I do not know whether I have fooled anyone—probably not the Minister—but these phrases do not come from Marx at all but from an altogether different source: Mr Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England. They were made not a century ago but as recently as last week. Moreover, Mr Carney’s objective was not to overthrow capitalism but to rescue it. The speech was, however, remarkable, especially given the source from which it came. I ask the Minister for his opinions on some of the themes which it contains. They are pretty powerful. The speech was full of implications for policy-makers and is relevant to the themes of the gracious Speech.
Mr Carney identifies some of the economic stresses and strains that have caused disillusionment among citizens, have alienated many of them from orthodox politics and have helped to fuel the rise of populist anti-establishment parties. He identifies three sets of factors in his speech. All, I suppose, are pretty well known but they are fundamentally important. First, he mentioned the emergence of staggering levels of inequality, especially at the very top, with the bankers in the lead. He says:
“Bankers made enormous sums in the run-up to the crisis and were often well compensated after it hit. In turn, taxpayers picked up the tab for their failures”.
Huge resentment has followed from the fact that ordinary people have had to pay for the excesses of the rich. At the same conference at which Mr Carney spoke, Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, made similar points in an equally forceful fashion, not about inequality in general, but about extreme inequality at the very top. I am pleased to see that the gracious Speech contains not one but two references to creating a fairer society. I would like, later on, a bit of expansion on how this is going to be achieved.
Mr Carney’s second point, made by many noble Lords here this morning, is that the recovery leaves large swathes of young people especially isolated from prosperity or jobs. The famous “lost generation” is a phrase used by everybody but is no less powerful for that because it is a serious risk. Even in my sector, as a university person, a substantial proportion of college graduates are unemployed—much larger than was the case a few years ago.
The governor’s third point is about the enduring effects of the crisis upon the poor, of which we have again heard mention today, especially in decaying working-class areas. These people bear,
“the real costs of financial instability—unemployment and the seizure of credit”.
Does the Minister accept this analysis, which seems to me to be very accurate? I particularly ask the Minister whether the Government accept the key theme of the speech—which is why it is such an important speech to be given by the Governor of the Bank of England—that market fundamentalism has proved divisive and dangerous. That is a big thing for the Governor of the Bank of England to say, and its implications are important.
Mr Carney indentifies three basic strategies which the Government should actively pursue to try to pick up the threads of these difficulties. Again, I will list them as a threefold set of remarks. The first policy should be to reintroduce competitive markets where market principles have become undermined. As Mr Carney puts it,
“Many supposedly rugged markets were revealed to be cosseted”.
Would the Minister agree that this includes situations of oligopoly? In circumstances of oligopoly, you have neither public control of the companies concerned, nor do you have a market. That situation applies in fairly large chunks of British industry today. It would be interesting to know if the Government have any policy of attacking that issue.
Secondly, Mr Carney says we should affirm the centrality of social justice, concentrating especially on the redistribution of wealth and income. He said,
“inequality… is a critical determinant of well-being”.
What policies do the Government have in place to reduce inequalities at the very top? The stress on tax avoidance has been important and consequential, but it is clear that much more needs to be done and we are dealing to some extent with a global and not just a national issue. What progress has been made, in the Government’s eyes, in either closing down or limiting the impact of tax havens?
The third point made in the speech is that we have to rebuild a sense of vocation in business and especially in banking. Mr Carney said:
“In the run-up to the crisis, banking became about banks not businesses; transactions not relations; counterparties not clients”.
What should the role of Government be in promoting a culture of ethical business? How can relationship banking be introduced on a substantial scale?
I do not ask these questions in a particularly partisan spirit because we all have an interest in saving capitalism from itself.
Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful that I am following the good and noble Lord, Lord Giddens. The last time that he and I spoke in a debate he made some very kind remarks following my maiden speech. If I had spoken before him today he might have felt the need to rectify the remarks that he made on that occasion, although I hope not. I shall not follow him in his analysis of the governor’s speech, but I join him in complimenting the right reverend Prelate on his maiden speech today. The right reverend Prelate’s comments on the housing market—I shall say something about it as well—will bring comfort to many. It is very reassuring to know that he and his colleagues do so much good work not only in the housing sphere but in so many other spheres in this country. I am sure that it will be rectified and that we will benefit in future debates from the experience he has had.
I was in the other place for nearly 14 years and have spent 25 years in various businesses primarily in the north of England but in the north-east in particular. I have frequently thought that so many of those involved in politics—particularly in the other place, if I may be forgiven for saying so—considerably underestimate the importance of confidence in the business world and in business decisions. Therefore this very delicate flower needs to be nurtured and sustained. It is a very delicate flower and a very sensitive issue.
Those of us with long memories can think of other occasions when confidence was shattered and damage done as a result of events spiralling out of control. I think of the Millom Co-op in Cumbria going bust in 1969, which led to a run on co-operative societies throughout the country. I was very involved in the co-operative movement at the time. The situation led to something happening which people do not recognise today, when the Co-operative Building Society changed its name to the Nationwide Building Society. It had a profound impact on businesses. I have often thought of that occasion during the recent discussions about the Co-operative Group and the difficulties that the Co-operative Bank has been facing.
We also had the secondary banking crisis in 1974. I was working in the City at the time. It was a major banking crisis. The Bank of England launched a lifeboat to save many banks but it allowed some of them to go to the wall. That crisis had the potential to cause a run on the system of the sort that we have seen in more recent years. Then, of course, we saw Northern Rock all of a sudden undermining confidence and the start of a run. Before that situation could be controlled it almost spiralled out of control.
It was of fundamental importance for this Government to inspire confidence in what they were doing and to gain the market’s confidence. I would maintain from these Benches that my colleagues in government, not least the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who has been primarily responsible for some of these matters, and the Deputy Prime Minister have made a major impact in maintaining the confidence of the markets. The Chancellor and the Government have made a difficult judgment which has had to be carried through and sustained over time, but it has led to that confidence. Apart from any other benefit, it has saved billions of pounds in interest on the debt which the Government have to sell on the markets. It has been crucial to get that judgment right. When one is in the sort of situation that the Government were in it is better to err on the side of caution rather than risk losing the confidence of the markets.
The Office of Budget Responsibility’s March outlook report stated that the Government remained on course to meet the fiscal mandate a year early in 2017-18. The underlying deficit in public sector net borrowing peaked at 11% of GDP in 2009-10, but the underlying deficit has fallen in cash terms and as a percentage of GDP for every year of this Parliament. The OBR reported that the deficit had fallen by more than a third by the end of last year. The deficit is forecast to have halved in the coming year from its post-crisis peak to reach 5.5% of GDP—£95.5 billion—which will be the first time in six years that annual public sector net borrowing will be below £100 billion.
According to the International Monetary Fund, between 2010 and 2013 the UK has reduced its structural deficit more than any other G7 country. If there is any question in anybody’s mind as to why the markets have confidence, one need only look at what the Government have achieved. This party on these Benches has paid a heavy political price for that austerity programme, but it was absolutely in the national interest that it should be carried through and sustained. I am proud to have been associated with what the Government have done on that front, which has led to the start of growth in the economy that we are seeing now.
The objective of long-term sustainable balanced recovery is still there. It is being sustained also by direct action by many departments, in particular Vince Cable’s department, with Vince Cable himself carrying through an industrial strategy that has underpinned the monetary policy and fiscal policy that the Government have pursued.
There has been support for public sector investment with green investment, the green bank, the business bank and the industrial strategy itself in many respects, with the training, innovation and technology strategy and the catapults. I could go through the whole range of things that that department and others have carried through, not least of which has been the work of the regional growth fund.
I was deputy chairman of the regional growth fund with the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine. That has had an enormous impact in regions such as the north-east in sustaining, in particular, smaller enterprises and getting investment in manufacturing going in a way that everyone in the country would like to see. The regional growth fund has been criticised for not getting money into the pockets of the businesses that have been awarded the money. It should be understood that this is not like other grant-giving bodies. If firms bid for grants, nothing is given until all the due diligence has been done and the contracts agreed. However the regional growth fund is a challenge fund where a conditional offer is made. The matter then has to go to due diligence and negotiation of the contract before the grants are given, which can take a very long time. Sometimes during the course of that negotiation and the due diligence being carried out it will be decided not to give the grant. That is the nature of a challenge fund of the regional growth fund-type. It is doing a magnificent job in the regions of this country and makes a very considerable impact, which has led to some of the jobs that have been created.
However, over the next five years this Government and the new one will have to make further judgments on public spending as the time to do so arises. We need to avoid getting involved, certainly on these Benches, in any “cold shower” economics—as in “Cold showers are good for you”. I refer to the masochists, who think that cutting is a virtue in itself. There is a balanced judgment to be made in sustaining the confidence of the markets, to which I referred, while at the same time ensuring that public services are protected and the weak and vulnerable are taken care of. That is a judgment that successive Governments will have to take—and there are going to be some very difficult judgments. If the party opposite ends up in office after the next general election, it will have to make some very difficult decisions on what to do about ring-fencing education and health—as will we, if we are in the same position as we are in at the moment. Anyone who looks at the public expenditure forecasts will see that, if they continue to be ring-fenced, they will be a massive proportion of public expenditure, which I believe is unsustainable. If that is the case, there are going to be some very big and difficult political decisions to be taken on what to do about education and health. I flag that up as something that a Government will have to do something about in the fairly near future.
Secondly, there is no national housing market, and some very misleading debate takes place on that issue. It is grossly misleading to talk about the average house price without taking into account all the regional differences in the country. According to Economic Research Council figures, across England and Wales house prices have increased by 6.7% over the past year, but remain about £10,000 below their peak price in late 2007. However—and I quote from my own experience—in the north-east, prices have increased by only 2.9% over the past year and actually fell in April, compared to March. Compared to their peak price, homes in the north-east are still £30,000 cheaper than they were in 2007. However, differences between the north-east and the national average are small when compared with the London market, where there has been an annual increase of 17% and prices are now £90,000 higher than at the previous peak of 2007.
I plead with those who want to start taking national policy decisions that will affect the markets outside London not to think that taking steps on the Help to Buy scheme is going to affect anything in central London. Frankly, I am not sure that there is much that the Government can do, unless it is a very radical policy, to affect the central London housing market anyway. How do you control overseas investors and the cash that is going in? You can control the mortgages and sustain the banking system, but you would find it very difficult to stop the money coming into the London housing market from the places from which it is coming in at the moment. That is one plea that I make. In future, these decisions will be extremely difficult if we are to sustain the confidence to which I referred.
I am delighted with how the gracious Speech has carried forward the economic policy measures of the past four years. I very much like the programme of legislation that is outlined in it, and very much commend it to the House.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester on his maiden speech. From these Benches, I can say that we are delighted that he will bring a great deal of insight and experience, not least into housing and prisons, into our debates.
There were a considerable number of areas in the gracious Speech which we, too, would welcome. Before I get on to specifics, I will make one or two general points. After the gracious Speech yesterday, I took my guest through to the other place, where the debate had already started. The Leader of the Opposition spoke of the very considerable disconnect between the electorate and Parliament. He pointed out:
“About 10% of those entitled to vote at the recent elections voted for UKIP, but as significant is the fact that over 60% did not vote at all. Whatever side we sit on in this House, we will all have heard it on the doorstep … ‘It doesn’t matter who I vote for.’ Of course that is not new, but there is a depth and scale of disenchantment that we ignore at our peril—disenchantment that goes beyond one party and one Government. There is no bigger issue for our country and our democracy, so the test for this legislative programme, the last before the general election, is to show that it responds to the scale of discontent and the need for answers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/6/14; col. 15.]
I recognise the problem, especially among the younger generation, but surely that is due at least in part to the loss of the concept of the common good. I fail to see how any particular piece of legislation is going to deal with that deeper discontent. There has been such emphasis on the mantra that rights and entitlements trump duties and obligations that we have lost the widely held narrative about how communities and families thrive and flourish and have lost sight of the fact that we find our individuality within families and communities, in mutual relationships. In short, we have created, or allowed to be created, unrealistic expectations about what life can offer and what politics can deliver.
Part of our task, as well as the legislation laid out in the gracious Speech, is to create a debate about how we live together that will involve our rights, of course, but also a much greater emphasis on what each of us needs to contribute. That tension is illustrated in yesterday’s legislative programme laid out before us, such as in the reforms to planning law. As part of the proposed infrastructure Bill, Her Majesty’s Government pledge to,
“Speed up the pace of delivery in key areas of infrastructure developments”—
wait for it—
“whilst still safeguarding the need for communities to be involved”.
Therein lies the tension that we are all trying to grapple with.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to responsible stewardship of public resources through seeking to simplify planning and infrastructure decision-making procedures. Yet the importance of giving proper consideration to those whose lives will be affected by these changes must not be overlooked. Subsidiarity must be a key principle in any reforms—working towards a more participatory democracy, in which all people feel that they have a stake in a shared society and want to engage in the democratic process. It is not an easy task. We have to insist that people do not retreat into an unthinking, uncaring nimbyism that refuses to address the real problems facing us. That is precisely the point that my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester made in his speech.
We find that same tension in the area of housing. I, too, welcome the announcement that there will be an increase in housing supply. There is no doubt that, certainly in some parts of the country, there is a huge shortage. But I know that in many areas, not least in some rural areas with which I have had close connection, the building of large quantities of housing is precisely the reason why some people feel that politicians do not listen to them. That is the dilemma that we are grappling with. Those people feel powerless; they think that their vote cannot, and does not, make a difference. How can we find ways to engage with local communities, again insisting that they do not put their heads in the sand but engage with the problems in their localities? Surely this is one of the areas where we need to work out a way to devolve powers from Westminster and enable more local solutions for housing.
One of my particular interests is the rural economy and rural sustainability. I note Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to opening up shale gas sites,
“by clarifying and streamlining the underground access regime”.
I recognise the importance of energy security, which will certainly be threatened in the coming years. However, the discussion about changing the law to allow companies to exploit gas reserves under privately owned land in return for only minimal compensation to landowners, even if the latter object, may not be the best way to achieve this end, especially if it is clear that profits are being taken out of that area and going somewhere else. Is this not another area where we need to think about introducing local agendas whereby communities can see that they will get tangible benefits from opening up the land and from the gas that is taken from it?
I am fully aware of the vital importance of energy security but have reservations about the wisdom of Her Majesty’s Government’s continuing overreliance on fossil fuels. We cannot afford to wait until we run out of fossil fuels before turning to alternative sources of energy. Indeed, we have more than enough fossil fuels remaining to do almost irreparable damage to our world. Rather, we must continue with serious sustained investment in research into and development of renewable energies to go along with the legislation on shale gas.
If the United Kingdom is to meet its commitment set out in the Climate Change Act of an 80% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2050, growth in the renewable energy sector will be needed way beyond the current 15% share of the national electricity supply. I applaud the Government’s push for an EU energy and climate change package that would mean at least a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. To this end, the Government’s investment in renewable energy sources must match the growth in private sector investment, which has created more than 37,000 green jobs across the UK in the past five years.
I note that there is time in the coming year for draft legislation to be published providing for direct elections to national park authorities in England. However, I should point out that many of us were not only hoping that legislation would be brought forward to respond to the forestry report, which was published in July 2012, but had tabled Written and Oral Questions on the matter. I am sure that some noble Lords are thinking that that topic is not for debate today as it concerns rural affairs, which will be discussed some time next week. However, one of the key points about the forestry report is that it is not just about the environment or leisure but has profound economic opportunities and implications for rural areas. I will not refer to them all but point out where it seems that we need to do some joined-up thinking.
We have been promised that the forestry report will be taken forward but some time has elapsed since its publication. This is one of the report’s recommendations:
“Government, woodland owners and businesses to seize the opportunity provided by woodlands to grow our green economy by strengthening the supply chain, and promoting the use of wood more widely across our society and economy”.
Another recommendation states:
“Local Enterprise Partnerships should work together to bid for funding … to develop woodland enterprise zones in areas where there are opportunities for a revitalised woodland economy to help create jobs in rural areas”.
I will quote one further recommendation:
“Local Authorities should use their Local Plans to introduce a ‘Wood First’ policy for construction projects to increase use of wood in buildings”.
Incidentally, this fits in closely with the Government’s desire, as spelt out in the gracious Speech, which states:
“Legislation will also ensure that new homes are built to a zero carbon standard from 2016, which will reduce carbon emissions and reduce household energy bills”.
The recommendation goes on:
“They should also create a positive planning environment for sustainable wood and forestry businesses, as well as those based on woodland leisure and tourism, that should always enhance natural capital”.
I hope that as we take the legislation forward some of these aspirations and recommendations will be brought before us.
A number of noble Lords have pushed Her Majesty’s Government to take all these recommendations forward, not least for economic reasons. I hope that a way will be found to do that in the coming year.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, I suggest to the Opposition Front Bench that the continuing message from the opinion polls, as confirmed by the results of the European Parliament elections a couple of weeks ago, is that criticism from Mr Miliband or Mr Balls of how the Government have handled the economy is very unconvincing.
The Chancellor has taken us out of the recession. That is what matters. Britain is growing at 3.3%, the same as Germany and much more than the USA. Socialist France, under the disastrous M Hollande, who is, in some ways, as weird as Mr Miliband, is growing at a derisory 0.1%. Italy is still in recession. Even with Germany to help it, the eurozone is making only 0.8% growth, while the rate in Britain is 3.3%. Unemployment, on the ILO basis, in the last quarter of 2013 was 7.1% in Britain while the rate in the eurozone was 12%, with France at 10.8%, Italy at 12.7% and Spain at a horrific 25%. The US rate is 7% and in Germany it is an enviable 5.1%. Net borrowing has been greatly reduced from 11% of GDP during Labour’s last year in office to 6.6% in 2013-14. However, not surprisingly, net debt—that is, the total government borrowing—is still far too high at 76% of GDP, well above the comparable Maastricht 60% target. We had been well below the Maastricht limit for more than 30 years until Gordon Brown so unwisely took the brakes off the economy. Inflation, the monster we must never forget, is not on the horizon but is never off the map. In 2010, using the old RPI, which I believe to be a much better indicator than the CPI, it was 4.8% and is currently 2.5%.
All this, of course, involved a period of austerity, with most of us seeing our take-home earnings falling in real terms over the past four years. Mr Miliband says that all this could have been achieved without the pain of austerity. Indeed, he implies that he would take the brakes off again. That reminds me of the story of Columbus and the egg. When Columbus came back from discovering America, the King of Spain gave him a great banquet and everyone praised him. Some of the courtiers were rather jealous. They said, “We could have done that, too. Why all this praise for Columbus?”. Columbus—after dinner, admittedly—took an egg and asked, “Can anybody balance this egg on its end?”. They all tried and of course could not do so. He tapped the bottom of the egg until it was nice and flat, and made it stand on its end. They all said, “We could have done that”. “Yes”, he said, “when I had shown you how”.
Having given priority to the views of Mr Miliband, let me come on to the advice we are getting from the EU on how we should run our economy. When I read it, I was reminded of the remark of the great Clement Attlee to Harold Laski when he was at his most loquacious:
“A period of silence on your part would be welcome”.
I would make one point on the EU and tax. Following the European Parliament elections, the Commission really must face up to the impracticality of the financial transaction tax unless it is operated on a global basis. Sub-Committee A of the EU Committee, which I am about to leave after four stimulating years under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, spent many months pointing out that the FTT was potentially deeply damaging to Britain’s position as Europe’s financial centre. London is one of the three great financial centres of the world, along with New York and Hong Kong. Now that there is diminishing support for the FTT, it should be abandoned and there should be a focus on introducing a workable stamp duty.
I want to mention one particular worry over the economy—the amount of toxic debt that still lurks. I want to take one item only as an example: the level of credit card debt that has overrun. It is not the debt that you and I pay off each month, but what is not being paid off and is therefore subject to very high rates of interest—anything between 16% and 26%. On the whole, few people can afford to borrow at such rates. Certainly, the sort of people who use credit cards to do so cannot afford it. It is basically unsecured debt and is therefore highly toxic. The last time the banks sold off this debt to the debt collectors they received between 8p and 12p in the pound for it. The level of that debt is currently more than £57 billion—more than £1,000 for every adult in the UK. It is also more than 20% of the market cap of all five big banks put together. In terms of stress tests on banks, we are talking serious money. Let us be clear that this consumer debt is completely different from mortgage debt, which is, to a large extent, secured by the houses on which it is made. The percentage growth in overrun credit card debt is interesting. It had been in single figures until the middle 1990s. It increased to 13% by the start of 1995, it increased hugely to 25% a year later and it has only recently started to come down again. Actually, it is beginning to creep up again. There is, for me, an unsolved mystery in the difference between the monthly figures published by the British Bankers’ Association and those published by the Bank of England. I am trying to discover the reasons.
Finally, I turn to the issue of how to deal with the taxation of residential property. One way not to do it is through the mansion tax proposals, so unwisely postulated by Dr Cable before he had begun to work out how to do it, and foolishly picked up by Mr Miliband. If Mr Miliband were to read the memoirs of the noble Lord, Lord Healey, he would see a warning on how not to introduce a wealth tax until you have worked out the details. Noble Lords will remember that Mr Healey tried to introduce a wealth tax in the 1970s. A lot of obstacles appeared and the proposal was referred to a Commons Select Committee, which said that the scheme could not work—and Mr Healey wisely abandoned it.
However, we all accept that although council tax was an excellent replacement for the disastrous poll tax, it has been hugely overtaken by the housing boom. To have eight bands, A to H, based on April 1991 house values, with top band H representing houses worth more than £320,000, is wholly inadequate when so many properties are making millions. There is an understandable and justifiable demand for those with much more expensive houses to pay a higher rate of tax of some form or other. I propose a completely new set of bands that could be called I to P, with the lower band, I, representing houses below a value of £500,000. The bands would then increase: from £500,000 to £1 million, from £1 million to £2 million, from £2 million to £5 million, from £5 million to £10 million, from £10 million to £15 million, from £15 million to £20 million, and over £20 million. One could have much higher rates of council tax on that basis. The key would be not to impose the new rates on all houses now because there would be, first, the gigantic problem of revaluation and, secondly, all the anachronisms of people who have lived for a long time in a house that is much more valuable than they would now be able to afford. There would be an element of retrospection in that. I suggest that the new bands, from the moment they were approved by Parliament, would apply to all subsequent domestic property acquisitions. They would be based on actual market prices, not arguable notional prices based on what district valuers think properties are worth. They find it difficult enough even to work out inheritance tax, let alone value every house. One would use the figures reported to the registrar, and people would know what they were in for when they bought a house. The system would not be retrospective; it would be workable and the sooner we introduce it, the better.
Lord Sawyer (Lab)
My Lords, I have spoken in almost every housing debate since I became a Member and was slightly concerned that today, given all the other economic issues, housing might slip off the agenda. I am pleased that that has not been the case and that many noble Lords—not least the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester, whom I congratulate on his maiden speech—have addressed it.
Housing is probably the number one economic issue that British people outside this House care about. The previous full debate in this Chamber on housing was back in January, when my noble friend Lady Ford raised the issue. Since that time, it is fair to say that it has gained considerable traction in the public mind. Indeed, in its editorial of 9 May, the Times said:
“Housing is the biggest problem in British politics. If it gets less attention than the biggest problem in British politics … this is because it is a problem that nobody knows how easily to solve”.
That is true; none of us really knows the solution to the British housing problem. The reasons for this unsolvability have been well aired in this House today and many times before, and I do not intend to go through the list of the problems there are in trying to house our people properly. It is true that there is a market frenzy in housing, which I hope will abate, but it gives way to a market frenzy of policy solutions—of daily advice from commentators, new reports from think tanks and opinions from politicians. It is hard for people to understand where we might be going at any given time. I find some of the advice quite depressing. I do not know why the Mayor of London has to be seen to stand up for foreign absentee landlords against the housing needs of millions of people in London. I also do not understand why we get so excited about opinions from the European Commission. Lots of domestic politicians and commentators in this country have talked about housing tax reforms, so why do we get excited because the European Commission says, “Why don’t you look at that?”? Well, why do we not look at it? It seems a sensible thing to do. The housing debate needs to get less excited and more serious so we can be seen to represent people’s deep concerns, and not just see it—as I think some people do—as some kind of political football.
There are some quite exciting things taking place in housing. A lot more people are thinking about self-build initiatives—in other words, finding their own way out of the problem and not depending on the Government, the state or developers. That is a great, although small, step forward. Is it true that we will find the modern prefab? Maybe we will; it has been good to read about that. Experts have tried to find the modern prefab for many years and failed, but it looks to me, given the frenzy of activity and heat generated around the issue, that maybe we will find an answer: a small, affordable home that would help to house the lowest paid and the unemployed. Boy, how much happier I would be to see that achieved than see another big tower block go up in central London.
Although I obviously have differences with part of government policy, it is important to recognise that the number of builds has improved and that the Government take housing seriously. Nick Boles has made an important, thoughtful and radical contribution to the debate. We need radical solutions. My biggest anxiety in this policy plethora is that the initiatives will come and go—some will succeed, some will fail—and then, when the turmoil ends and the media wagon moves on to put another issue at the top of our headlines, the problem will remain: still not enough decent homes in the right place for the right people.
That is why, when I thought about what I might ask us to think about this afternoon, I returned to the themes of the January debate in the House. The burden of the argument in that debate, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, and others, was that we needed to think more carefully about the new town development corporation approach, to see whether it could give us a more rounded solution to all the individual policy initiatives we have—not just in London. I take the point made by many noble Lords that there might be different policies for London and the south-east. We need to look at where people’s needs are, wherever they may be. Any policies that look at new towns should focus not just on a set number of new towns, but on what people want and on creating, as has already been said in another place, population densities of about 100,000 people.
I never cease to be impressed by the achievements of my parents’ generation—the generation that kicked off the new town movement. That generation built 32 new towns for their families and their children. Where would we have been without that? We would not have been as well off as we are today. This approach is different from a garden city approach. There is no doubt about that: there were only two garden cities and 32 new towns. Garden cities were created by a group of idealistic people, who many of us in this House—certainly those of us on the left in politics—would identify with, but they are not new towns. There were much clearer guiding principles, more rigorous requirements—both from architects and planners—and more involvement from people. The people who inhabited the new towns had a lot more involvement in their environment than we normally see today. Although I support the new town concept, I would like us to be clear that a couple of new towns will not solve our housing problem.
I am pleased to say that the development corporation idea has had some support since January. I came across a recent report from the Housing Forum—a cross-sector, independent housing organisation—that said:
“While recognising the importance of both local authorities and housing associations, there is a limitation to the speed and scale that can be delivered within the confines of their operations, both geographically and operationally”.
The Housing Forum has tried to learn lessons from the London Docklands Development Corporation, which it felt did a good job by doing things such as bringing together local authorities, overcoming difficulties with planning permission, grant giving, using compulsory purchase order powers and overcoming all kinds of issues that probably no company would have on that scale today. It created 24,000 new homes, which does not sound very many to me, but still.
The Housing Forum’s report continues:
“As we continue to struggle to corral a complex and poorly functioning housing market to deliver new homes, it could be that a major interventionist approach will ultimately be the only way of bringing the key components of land, finance, planning and purpose together”.
We should think about that. That is basically why I am on my feet today. Of course, that is not the only solution. Some commentators really annoy me: somebody comes up with an idea for a new town or a garden city and the commentators say, “It has to be brownfield sites”. Nobody says existing cities would not be developed on brownfield sites. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wrigglesworth, you would not look at developing new towns in the north of England today; you would look at developing on brownfield sites in the inner city. We need both policies to run together; we cannot have a one-policy solution.
As I come to the end of what I wanted to say—I am sure you will agree it was not very much—I want to make one point; sometimes you just have to get up and make one point and that is okay. I just want noble Lords to hear this. As I read about and observe what is going on in our society and in our homes, probably like a lot of noble Lords I feel anxious and upset about what people are having to go through. When I see houses and apartments that are vehicles for profit or pensions, and not for people who need buildings to live in—they are locked out—I get really angry. I would like to see an elected politician—probably a Prime Minister or a leader of the Opposition, somebody with power who the people will listen to—stand up and say, “What we want in this country, what I want to deliver for you, my British friends, my electorate, is world-class housing for this country”. Our politicians said they wanted a world-class Olympic Games and they delivered it. We have sent our England team to play in the World Cup. Did we say we want them to come second or third? If we are lucky we might do that, but are we not sending the team out to be the best in the world?
We have the best architects in the world: Rogers, Hadid, Foster and many more. When they travel the world, and as they build these beautiful new buildings, what do they say to their clients when they ask, “But haven’t you got one of the most problematic housing markets in the developed world in your own country?”? They have to say, “Yes, we have”. I say, why do they not help us to solve our problem? Why do they not talk about world-class housing for people who live in this country? Maybe the Prime Minister will use the Wolfson report to make that point. I am very much looking forward to that. Maybe the leader of the Opposition will use the Labour Party’s equivalent, the Lyons review, to say the same thing: that we want world-class housing. Maybe he will not: maybe we will just get more housing reviews.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, as I am primarily going to talk about local government I should begin by declaring an interest as a vice president of the Local Government Association, but for the first time in nearly 20 years in your Lordships’ House I do not have to declare an interest as a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton. I hasten to add that that was by my choice, not the people’s choice. I felt that 40 years was enough and I did not seek re-election.
However, I was invited to the first Liberal Democrat group meeting on the Saturday morning after the election. I like to think I was invited to give some fatherly advice to all the newly elected councillors; the truth is, I was invited because I was the only one they could find who knew how to conduct the group elections by the single transferable vote. I went into the too-small room and saw before me the 45 newly elected and re-elected Liberal Democrat councillors. The nine Conservatives remaining were in a cupboard down the corridor having their group meeting, which took about 10 minutes—they sacked their leader.
The thought that struck me forcibly for the first time as I looked at our new 45-strong Liberal Democrat group was just how much it looked like our local community. For years now, we have had a pretty good gender mix, which is still there and still strong. We have had, for borough population, a better than average visible ethnic mix. I could see from the family names of the newly elected councillors that they reflected a fair number of European countries. I saw a mobility scooter parked at the door, and I happen to know that at least two of our newly elected councillors have been assisted by a scheme to help people with disabilities to attain elected office.
However, what struck me most forcibly and what was new was the age range of our new councillors. At least five of them were under 30, which, I am sorry to say, these days is quite an achievement. Of particular pride to me was the fact that several of those new young councillors had been born in the borough when it was run by the Liberal Democrats. They had been at the schools in the borough when it was run by the Liberal Democrats and now they were there as part of a Liberal Democrat administration. I understand that my Conservative and Labour friends will think that there is nothing unusual about that, and indeed in many areas of the country that is not unusual for their parties. However, for my party it is not just unusual but unique, so I was very proud of that. The Liberal Democrats were expected to retain control of Sutton council, so when we did it really was not news. There was much more news in relation to places where we were not retaining control and to some places where, sadly, we were not retaining councillors at all.
However, I wondered why nobody asks why an outer London suburb of 200,000 residents and no particularly distinguishing characteristics has elected a Liberal Democrat council eight times over for 32 consecutive years. I wondered even more why for half of that time—for 16 years—it has elected Liberal Democrats to more than 80% of the council seats. We still support proportional representation; we would just like one or two other councils to join in the experiment.
I say all that not just to boast—although I feel that I have something to boast about—but because I think that having the answers to those questions would certainly be a service to my party and might offer some lessons for politics and politicians as a whole. It is a truly remarkable achievement. If any of my noble colleagues are also wondering about the answers to those questions and are perhaps thinking of commissioning a poll, I shall be only too happy to suggest the questions and to co-operate in finding some of the answers.
I now move on to the subject of local government more widely and more generally. Local government represents roughly 25% of public expenditure and therefore it is inevitable and fair that it should have had to bear its share of reducing the deficit. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Wrigglesworth said earlier, with the ring-fencing of education and health, it is even more inevitable that much of the brunt of deficit reduction will fall on local government, and that has happened. I cannot honestly say that local government makes no complaint about that. For as long as I can remember, it has always complained about the financial settlement, regardless of who are in government and regardless of the financial situation. However, I believe that all parties in local government generally have done remarkably well in coping with their share, or perhaps more than their share, of the deficit reduction. I recognise and accept that, and I always have done. My main regret looking back—and I said it at the time —was that it was so front-loaded and that so many of the deficit reduction measures for local government happened in the first two years. I say that particularly because truly transforming services and local government cannot be done in a hurry under the pressure of having to find immediate and substantial budget cuts. It takes time. With hindsight, and perhaps not just with hindsight, I would rather that we had been given the full four-year period to meet the same targets.
I now want to look to the future. For most major local authorities, the worst is yet to come. We know now that for most authorities the financial year 2015-16 will be the worst so far. The relatively easy budget cuts have been made. I say “relatively easy” because many of them have not been easy at all, but relatively they have been. What are left now are the severe cuts to public services, and all authorities, of whatever political persuasion, will this year—not next year—struggle with having to make difficult, controversial and inevitably unpopular budget cuts.
I understand and wholly accept that there have been significant and disproportionate effects on some sections of the community, but I do not think that the greater majority of residents all over the country—north and south—have been personally greatly affected by budget cuts. That is going to change over the next 12 months and it will happen during a period in which the coalition parties, certainly, will be trying to convince the public that the recovery is on the way. They will be trying to convince them that the past four years of hardship were worth it because the recovery is starting, but that is not likely to be the local experience.
That is clearly an issue for my party and our coalition partners but I do not think that I will see any wise Labour Party people rejoicing either. They will know that those budget cuts are being made in the town halls, and it is at the town halls that people will be protesting to those making the unpopular decisions. In most cases now—sadly, from my point of view—it is Labour councillors who, first and foremost, will get the blame. There is nothing in that for any of us. The outcome will inevitably be even more public disillusionment and disengagement and all the effects that we know only too well will come from that. I feel very sad to give a gloomy but inevitable prognosis for the period up to the general election.
There is one particular issue on which I want to comment. For a local authority, being able to raise income is often a better choice than cutting a budget. It needs to be done proportionately and fairly but, if it is done to raise greater income and thus avoid greater cuts, that surely is usually a better option. Yet, so often when a local authority embarks on that course, Ministers complain about it. I shall take one recent example, although there are many. Charging for the collection of green garden waste in a local authority—I think that it was probably in Birmingham—was recently criticised by CLG Ministers and by one in particular, and it is an issue that many of us are going to have to look at. However, it is a discretionary service; there is no requirement on local authorities to collect green garden waste. To paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, it is, if you like, a service paid for by the poor to provide to the rich. I use both those terms relatively, but all those who live in flats or small houses with small or no gardens are paying through their council tax for a so-called free service to those of us who are fortunate enough to have large gardens and silly enough not to do sufficient composting. At any time but particularly under the current financial constraints, what on earth is wrong with charging for that service? Why does the Secretary of State suggest that there is something wrong with it and why—I can probably guess—does a local Conservative MP choose to describe it as a stealth tax? I would have thought that it was anything but stealthy. I think that Ministers need to think about their attitude towards this.
One particular area of charging which is, and always will be, controversial is parking. Earlier this year, the Department for Transport carried out a public consultation on local authority parking strategies. I think that if there is one subject that should be left to local authorities, it is parking; nevertheless, the Government, and the Department for Transport in particular, have carried out that consultation. At this stage, I am not going to start a debate on parking but the end of the consultation document states:
“A summary of responses, including the next steps, will be published within three months of the consultation closing”.
The consultation closed on 14 February. The analysis of the results and the next steps should have been with us before 14 May. I looked on the website last night to see that the results are still being analysed. I have seen quite a lot of the results. I suspect that the analysis is not taking very long. Probably what is taking a little more time is what the next steps will be. I do not suppose the Minister is likely to tell us those next steps this afternoon or will drop just a few hints, particularly about the use of CCTV cameras, which is causing much concern. If nothing else, perhaps she will tell us when we will have the analysis of the results and, even better, when the Government will decide on the next steps. Best of all, will they decide that it is best left to local authorities to decide for themselves?
The greatest welcome from local government for this Queen’s Speech is that there is no significant local government legislation in it, although a number of Bills, such as the Deregulation Bill and the Infrastructure Bill, are of particular interest. As has been said several times already today and no doubt will be said many times more, our real interest is in the Queen’s Speech after the next Government have been elected. We will see from whoever is in government whether they have a commitment to the devolution of power, which must mean a devolution of revenue raising and spending, and whether that really will be in the next Queen’s Speech.
I conclude with the comment that, based on the election results two weeks ago and most opinion polls for a long time now, the party most likely to be in government in a year’s time is the Liberal Democrats.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, at the start of his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, talked about commissioning polls. May I advise him that he may need to be careful after recent Lib Dem experiences in this area? Like the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, I shall concentrate on the general economic situation rather than look at details of the Bills in the forthcoming Session. The gracious Speech comes after a generally very well received 2014 Budget. The economy continues to recover. Latest official figures showed the UK economy growing by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2014. Forecasts continue to be revised upwards. Only last Friday, the British Chambers of Commerce became the latest organisation to upgrade.
According to the Financial Times, the chambers now expects GDP growth for 2014 to be 3.1%, which is up from its previous forecast of 2.8%, continuing the strong forecasts of the first quarter and, if achieved, the highest rate since pre-crisis 2007. Separately, the CBI’s latest growth report suggests the UK economy has continued to perform strongly in the second quarter of this year, with the growth survey of its group reaching a record high, making it the best reading since it started gathering data in 2003.
At the time of the Budget, the Chancellor highlighted the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast for GDP growth. The annual budget deficit is coming down and the borrowing target for 2013-14 was reached. The unemployment rate is continuing to decline. Inflation forecasts remain low. Therefore, the economic background continues to improve although there is still a long way to go. Quite rightly, the Budget focused on measures to help business as well as giving important help to savers and taxpayers mainly at the lower end of the tax scale.
Looking overall at the UK economy’s improvement, a year ago at the Budget the Chancellor said that the OBR’s forecast for 2014 GDP growth was 1.8%. It is now 2.7%, which was a good sign of recovery. The 2015 figure also was adjusted upwards. Annual borrowing is also showing a marked improvement. Britain borrowed a horrendous £157 billion the year before the coalition came to office. As was pointed out by my noble friend Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in his speech failed even to mention this by way of background to the coalition’s deficit reduction strategy.
In 2014-15, the OBR said that the budget deficit will fall to £95 billion. Although it has taken longer than expected and there is a long way to go, it predicts that it will fall to £18 billion by 2017-18. According to the Red Book, interest payment savings on the debt over this Parliament are expected to amount to around £10 billion per year by 2015-16 as a result of the Government’s consolidation plans.
Unemployment figures also show an encouraging trend. The latest jobless figures published last month show that the number of people out of work fell to the lowest figure for five years. To put this into a longer period context, according to the Office for National Statistics, at the time of the Budget, employment was up by nearly 500,000 people for the year ending January 2014. According to the Budget speech, 1.3 million more people were in work than when the coalition came to power in 2010. According to the ONS, the claimant count fell by 24% in the past year, which is the largest annual fall since March 1998 according to the Budget Red Book. Youth unemployment went down by 58,000 in the past year, which also is a good sign. I applaud the imposition of the welfare cap linked to inflation, which I see is now supported by the Opposition, although I know that cyclical unemployment benefits are excluded.
The next area showing an encouraging recovery is manufacturing. The latest survey on UK manufacturing, published on Monday, stated that UK factory output is continuing to enjoy one of its strongest growth periods for 22 years according to a Markit/CIPS publication. The latest CBI industrial trends survey, published on 22 May, stated that the UK manufacturing sector remained solid in May and that output is expected to rise strongly over the next three months. The CBI quarterly industrial trends survey, published in April, stated that business optimism among manufacturers saw its sharpest improvement since 1973 on the back of strong growth in orders at home and abroad. Encouraging news also appeared in March on manufacturing pay deals. Pay settlement figures in manufacturing rose to 2.6% in the first quarter compared to last year’s average of 2.4% in the latest sign that the squeeze on living standards is easing.
The services sector is also showing a good recovery. The latest Markit/CIPS survey stated that the UK’s dominant economic sector grew at a faster rate than expected in May while employment in the sector stayed at the 17-year high recorded in April.
As other noble Lords have stated, another economic indicator performing favourably is inflation. The OBR forecasts that it will fall below the 2% target in 2014 at 1.9%, and will not exceed it at any time before 2018. Tuesday’s latest figures confirm the satisfactory trend.
In the 2014 Budget, there were welcome measures to help business. As the Chancellor said in his speech, when the coalition came to power the corporation tax rate was 28%. Very shortly, corporation tax will be down to 21%. The corporation tax rate cut has been a great help to companies, as has been an innovative move to benefit pharmaceutical companies and others with the new patent box tax regime. The second major boost for business in the Budget was the increase in the annual investment allowance from £250,000 to £500,000 till the end of 2015. This was warmly welcomed by the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.
The third major area of help was company energy costs. The Chancellor can be congratulated on producing a £7 billion energy package that will cap a green tax and shield companies from rising renewable energy subsidy costs. The major manufacturing trade body, the EEF, and the employers’ group, the CBI, have praised all the above as well as congratulating the Chancellor on his apprenticeship funding, changes to the R&D tax credit regime, the extra support for UKEF to boost exports and the decision to make permanent the seed enterprise investment scheme, which is such a help in financing new start-ups.
I now move on to measures for savers. First, I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s proposals from 2015 with regard to pensions, allowing investors free access to spend or invest their pots as they wish once they have reached the qualifying age. I remember occasions when this was nearly achieved in the past but fell at the last fence, so I am delighted to see the Chancellor finally acting to give pension savers their freedom. Also, I welcome the new pensioner bonds for those over 65, paying up to 4% if held for three years.
Next, I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s plans to extend the ISA limit to £15,000 and the merger of the cash and shares ISAs. According to the Daily Telegraph, these tax-free accounts are now held by 24 million people. Sensibly, in a separate move, the Treasury has also allowed, encouraged by a campaign by the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, and myself, AIM stocks to be included in ISAs.
I also welcome the abolition of the 10% tax rate on savings for certain savers and basic rate taxpayers. The increase in the personal allowance is most welcome too—up to £10,500 next year from £10,000. The limited increase in the starting level for the higher-rate band is also welcome, but more needs to be done to uprate this in line with inflation and, over the long term, consideration should be given to bringing the top rate down to 40%.
Turning to the most gracious Speech, I welcome the small business, enterprise and employment Bill in particular, which has been welcomed by the CBI among others. I welcome the updated Charter for Budget Responsibility and was impressed by the Minister’s remarks on infrastructure projects with regard to planning, roads and shale gas. I was also attracted by the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, for an independent commission for major infrastructure projects.
In conclusion, the Government have been right to stick to their course on deficit reduction. I listened with interest in the March economic debate to the ideas from noble Lords opposite that there should have been increased government spending earlier in the Parliament, but these do not seem to have been generally repeated today. That would have been a dangerous course because the markets could well have been upset by a perceived lack of control on government finances. The recovery is heading in the right direction. There is still a long way to go, but the coalition’s approach has been fully justified.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, after that Panglossian account, I wonder whether the noble Lord who has just spoken was knocking on the same doors as I was a couple of weeks ago. Many Labour politicians who were knocking on doors found a deep sense of insecurity right across the country, apart from in London, where the experience is generally not the same as that of the rest of the country. All the statistics show that—not least the fact that house prices in London are double the rest of the country. The rest of the country more or less moves together.
There is no easy way to fix this, but fix it we must because otherwise we will be left in the position of those people on the continent who remember the 1930s. I remember that when I was on the Bruno Kreisky commission on unemployment in Europe one wise old bird said, “Well if people don’t believe that politicians can do anything about their insecurity in employment, why do we need any politicians?”. That has dangerous implications. I do not want to exaggerate, but the malaise is not unrelated to some of the types of data that we have been hearing about. I will give two examples.
Involuntary temporary and part-time work is growing, but the actual numbers are startling. I was going to say, “Hands up who know that the ONS has shown that these categories of involuntary temporary and part-time work have risen by 66% and 103% respectively since 2008”. A new analysis by the ONS of zero-hour contracts shows the scale of insecure work. There are 1.4 million such contracts—or 2.7 million if the 1.3 million contracts for people who are reported as doing no work over the two-week time period used for the analysis are included.
There is another example of an unjustifiably satisfied gloss being put on the state of our economy at the moment. I pick up the point that arose from a remark by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, with whom I always enjoy crossing swords on these occasions. It is true, as she said, that no major advanced economy has grown as fast as we have in the past 12 months. But the explanation for that is very largely that, in the vernacular, if you dig a bigger hole, you have to grow faster to get out of it. I will give you the statistics. If we look at the total position of the British economy and the German economy from the same benchmark starting date of the same quarter of 2008, our position as of April is that we are still two thirds of 1% lower than before we fell off the cliff. We are still below the peak. Germany, from the same benchmark starting date, is now 3.83% higher than before the peak. That is the relevant statistic—not how fast we are growing in one or two quarters at the present time, welcome as that is.
Baroness Noakes
I am fascinated by what the noble Lord said. Could he remind noble Lords under which Government the hole was dug?
Lord Lea of Crondall
It was Lehman Brothers what dug the hole, if we want to get to that level of sophisticated debate. Gordon Brown was the most courageous statesman in the world in stopping it being even worse than it was. The noble Baroness represents the flash boys in the City and so on as part of the ideal economy, but I would say that it is those people what created the crash. Unless there are any more questions I will proceed.
We had a 7.2% fall from the peak, as I think my noble friend Lord Adonis pointed out.
One party in the coalition Government was the party of Disraeli, who famously referred to one nation. We are losing a sense of one nation and I would like to hear a little more from the Benches opposite about whether they do not think that there is a deep, chronic problem now in talking about one nation. Of course, there are three or four dimensions of it. There is the regional dimension, which I will come to, and top-down, education and social class. We all know that you can measure all the interactions until the cows come home. However, it would be foolish to deny the absolutely extraordinary change in the degree of inequality in this country over the past few years. We have now gone back to before 1945. I am holding up a graph which normally hangs on my wall. It looks like we are climbing Mount Everest, having last seen a similar peak of this ratio before the Second World War. That is not conducive to one nation or to a healthy economy.
I want to talk a little about the structural problem that is reflected in the contrast between the two economies in the United Kingdom: the London economy and the non-London economy. All the figures for the non-London economy of the UK correlate to some extent and show that the London economy is nothing like that of the rest of the UK. A brilliantly argued and well researched report by Deutsche Bank Securities published last November reached the conclusion that,
“there was less correlation in growth patterns between London and the rest of the UK than between the different members of the eurozone”.
It is hard to believe that, but it is pertinent to another point that will immediately become obvious. What are the implications of this? How many people in this House, particularly those on the Benches opposite, which have one or two more Eurosceptics than there are on the Labour Benches, have argued that the economic growth patterns seen in the eurozone mean that it is not possible to have a single monetary policy or any sort of economic governance? Based on that criterion, what if I were to say that we cannot possibly govern the United Kingdom? Would it be said in this House that we cannot possibly govern the United Kingdom?
Lord Flight (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Is not the crucial point that within the United Kingdom there are transfer payments worth at least £70 billion per annum from the more prosperous south and south-east to the less prosperous north, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? The problem in the EU is that Germany is unwilling to make transfer payments to the less prosperous parts that are unable to compete with that country.
Lord Lea of Crondall
If that is the reason why the noble Lord does not agree with the eurozone, I would say that over recent months Angela Merkel and her friends over there have been ready to put their hands in their pockets to do what it takes. It is all to do with the single market and having a single currency. I think that this could be a diversion; I am just drawing attention to the fact that the United Kingdom is in the same position. The transfer payments that we need now are becoming a huge challenge, given the rates of return—unless you count what might be called the external economies such as HS2, which I strongly support.
I strongly support the infrastructure proposals for our roads, but I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, that she should note that the graph detailing major road expenditures over both Governments has gone up and down even more dramatically than the Blackpool Pleasure Beach attraction to which the noble Lord, Lord McNally, earlier referred with such nostalgia. We cannot have sudden switches on and off for road expenditure—I was going to say something unparliamentary—with not much in other periods.
What are the policy consequences? Someone who sits in this House but is not with us today said something about getting on your bike. Getting on your bike is fine, of course, if you want to go and work in London. But we know that there is a terrible dilemma around the green belt, town and country planning, and more growth in London relative to anywhere else. I strongly support what the Government have said about HS2 tying up with the Northern Hub. Infrastructure plans, as well as other subventions in terms of training, the labour market and so on, have to be somewhat disproportionately higher than for what might be called a private rate of return. If you were a private enterprise running education in Bolton, you would have to deal with this on a broader basis. I would ask the Government to consider whether they appreciate the scale of transfers which have to be made, which must also come with a challenge to enterprise to respond.
One nation is receding from us—hence the malaise, insecurity, lack of full-time jobs and so on. Mr Miliband has been mentioned and I will refer to him. Only Mr Miliband has the analysis that will lead to the policy with which the next Labour Government will be able to make a significant improvement to these structural problems.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I take a particular interest in energy and climate change, so it was some relief to see in the list of Bills that we do not have another energy Bill this Session, the previous one having taken up most of the time of energy teams on all sides from the general election through to December last year. As my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding said earlier in the debate, there is relief that it is all about implementing quickly and effectively all the enabling secondary legislation that will be needed to make sure that our energy supplies in this country—hopefully renewable rather than non-renewable—are guaranteed, protected and in place over the next one or two decades.
Having said that, I particularly want to draw the Government’s attention to the fact that the latter parts of the Bill put much greater emphasis on the demand side of electricity markets, in contrast to the complete and utter focus on supply at the beginning. I ask my noble friends, Ministers and the Secretary of State in DECC to make sure that that momentum continues, particularly when it comes to the capacity mechanism that is out to consultation. A number of important decisions will be made fairly soon on demand-side management, and the demand side should be taken fully into account so that we can benefit from the investment that will lead to further reductions in electricity costs as well. I hope that that emphasis will remain strong.
What we have in the Infrastructure Bill, as has already been mentioned by many noble Lords, is fracking and being able to exploit that resource and get around the legal difficulties and hurdles that there are at the moment. I support this in principle. I think it is quite a difficult message to sell, because stating that you are going to take away people’s rights, even though the fracking will be at a greater depth than 300 metres underground—I think that is the proposal—will mean that there are concerns. It is a way forward through which we can exploit our resources effectively. It has been true of other areas of energy already. However, we have to make sure that the environmental controls on gas from those unconventional sources are absolutely tight, that they work completely effectively—not just partially—and that people can have complete confidence in the environmental checks as that industry starts to work.
Again, we have to remember that gas can only be an intermediary fuel in the UK’s energy mix. I suspect that it is unlikely that we will have a lot of gas that will benefit from carbon capture and storage, or from other ways of taking carbon content out of gas, so it is an intermediary technology. Nevertheless, as illustrated many times by my Conservative colleagues, we have seen that by introducing more gas into the generating mix in the short term, the United States, which is still the largest economy in the world, has managed to reduce carbon emissions quite significantly. I may come back to that theme later on.
What intrigues me from a renewables point of view, as someone who lives in the far south-west, is that the logic—forgive me, I was going to say spin, but I am sure it is not—of this particular development and legislation is also about helping geothermal generation, not just of electricity but of heat. I hope that my ministerial colleague in her answer will state or confirm that with the increased profile of geothermal energy in the gracious Speech we will have further action from the Government in promoting this technology—not just through the renewable heat initiative, which has started to work very effectively, but in terms of electricity generation. We have a fantastic resource, which is completely renewable and not an intermittent power source either. From that point of view, I hope we will see a brighter future for it.
The other area I wanted to move on to is that of zero-carbon homes, which is a DCLG issue as well as one of energy and environment. I am interested to read the proposals as they are published on that, because we have had a target—set, I think, by the previous Government—for the number of zero-carbon or carbon-neutral homes by 2016. That was a very important target but one that was always under threat from the temptation to dilute it as we approached that date. I am very pleased indeed to see that the Government have reaffirmed their intention to meet that target and maybe to meet it in a more practical sense. Through what they describe as “allowable solutions”, there are ways outside that particular development to make sure that overall, maybe through community energy schemes and that sort of thing, developments are carbon-neutral. In particular, I press on the Government and my noble friend the need to make sure that those definitions and restrictions, and the allowances to move away from the building itself being zero-carbon, are interpreted strongly and really are delivered. If that is the case, it will be a sensible way to move forward in this area.
However, I am concerned that there is an exclusion around small developments. No one would wish to promote smaller developments more than I do. I live in a village community. I think it was Prince Charles who asked why we do not have more small developments in village and other communities, as well as garden cities and new towns. I agree—we should have those smaller developments and they should be a significant proportion of the total housing stock—but it is dangerous to exclude them totally from this legislation.
One thing really worries me about this, given my business background. In a way, I can see that there is a sort of logic that says that smaller developers do not necessarily have the skills and are not necessarily able to apply some of these technologies. However, you then create a barrier to growth for those organisations in the future—in a way, this is where the whole construction industry needs to learn those skills and to be able to apply them. I will be testing that exclusion very strongly, because I think it is likely to be a mistake. We have learnt that the biggest mistake over the past decades, particularly in the 1960s and the 1970s, was to build homes that we have to spend an endless amount of extra money retro-converting decades later to make them suitable places that people can live in within sensible energy budgets in the future.
I was delighted with the part of the Speech—I am sure it was not supposed to be quite as marginal as it perhaps appeared—that said:
“My Ministers will also champion efforts to secure a global agreement on climate change”.
This, perhaps, is the most important area for all of us that will develop in Lima in December this year at the international conference and particularly a year later in Paris, where we expect and hope—I certainly do—that there will be a new international agreement on climate change. The announcement in the United States by the Obama Administration that they will start to get tough on their own emissions was a major step forward in setting the climate, if I can put it that way, for those negotiations, not just with Europe and developing countries but with China in particular.
In the past week, I think, the final figures for EU emissions for 2012 came out, and there are already provisional ones for 2013. The 2012 figures showed that European emissions had come down by 1.3% and were very close to the Kyoto target for the European Union of 20% from 1990. That target will be met soon, but there were two major exceptions in those figures. One of them was Germany, where emissions had gone up. The other, I regret to say, was the United Kingdom: our carbon emissions had gone up 4.5% and our overall greenhouse gas emissions by 3.5%. They are coming down in 2013 but not by that amount.
Why is that? It is because, despite the fantastic work this Government have done in delivering renewables, we have moved from a primarily gas-based system of electricity generation to one based on coal. Just over 40% of our electricity is now generated by coal. Those coal stations are expected to move out of production over the next decade, but I ask the Government to redouble their efforts. Regrettably, they did not do this completely in the Energy Act, but they should make sure that while the UK promotes shale and alternative gas, at the same time the old dirty technologies of coal generation disappear. That way, our emissions can come down substantially once again.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I was not here yesterday but I listened very carefully and I was, quite honestly, very disappointed. The Bills that are coming before us offer nothing to the disadvantaged and nothing to the vulnerable. The poor and the disabled are virtually ignored, which means that these Bills will open up the rich-poor divide even more than it has been opened up already by this Government. It is a shame that this is happening, and the Government really have to deal with it. I will raise a few issues that I would like answers on and will flag them up as I come to them.
The idea of infrastructure is always very interesting. For decades now, new power stations, energy supply projects and so on have been put in infrastructure, which means they are relatively protected from funding cuts. However, energy efficiency programmes do not come under the infrastructure tag. Why not? A good energy efficiency programme means that you do not have to build the new power stations, so why is that not infrastructure as well? I would like an answer to that.
Secondly, I assume that all infrastructure projects are assessed for their economic, social and environmental benefits. Are they prioritised according to what is the most beneficial? Many of the policies in the Queen’s Speech do not have any concept of what is good for people and good for the planet. It is obvious that future spending restrictions on capital investment in infrastructure are going to be much less than in other areas, so we really need to put in as much as we can away from funding cuts. That is absolutely crucial.
Finally, the Infrastructure Bill seems to offer assistance to big oil companies and housebuilders but not to hard-pressed householders. It builds on the tax breaks that fossil fuel companies have already been given in the hope that they will find gas and sell it cheaply to bring down bills. If that money were given to householders to insulate their homes, that would be a much more efficient use of the money and, of course, overall much better for the environment. Hoping that the big companies will do the right thing is madness; it is a forlorn hope and we have to think about better ways to protect ourselves. We really should not be spending public funds on the extraction of fossil fuels that would be better left underground. The Government have not understood the IPCC’s recent report, which says:
“There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual”.
The Infrastructure Bill also gives new freedoms to the Highways Agency for road construction and introduces planning changes to fast-track developments. With the problems that we have already with our carbon emissions, building new roads is, again, absolute madness. I just do not understand how any Government could think that this is all right.
Global agreements on climate change are wonderful —we really need them—but they come to absolutely nothing if the Governments who are actually setting the policies and spending the money do not understand what climate change means. Specifically, this fracking trespass Bill introduces a new right of corporate trespass for oil and gas companies and threatens home owners across Britain because it will allow companies to run shale gas pipelines under private land without seeking the consent of home owners. I understand that the Prime Minister said today in the other place, in response to a question from Caroline Lucas MP, that it will not be legal to frack against a property owner’s will. Perhaps the Minister could clarify that point and tell me whether the Prime Minister is speaking for the whole party.
The fracking trespass Bill would also decimate our environment and climate infrastructure. It will not only make local conditions very bad because of the pollution that it will cause and the lorry movements and so on, it will mean the development of a whole new fossil fuel industry that will make it impossible for us to keep to our climate change targets.
Thirdly, this Bill suggests that the Government have already chosen National Grid’s slow progression energy scenario but have kept quiet about it. Perhaps the Minister could let me know if that is true. In 2012 National Grid released a report, UK Future Energy Scenarios, which gave three options. The first was “Slow Progression”, which assumed that climate change targets would be abandoned. The second was “Gone Green”, which was to meet climate targets. The third was “Accelerated Growth”, which was about meeting climate targets early. This Bill suggests that the Government have chosen the slow progression and have in effect abandoned the whole concept of climate change targets.
I will now say what I really would have liked to have seen in the Government’s plans for next year. There are four things. The Government could still introduce them. Perhaps we could discuss them afterwards if the Minister would like to take them up. The first is a fossil fuels divestment Bill, which would require the withdrawal of all public funds that are indirectly or directly supporting companies or activities involving the exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, domestically and internationally, and to reinvest all such funds in zero-carbon energy generation and energy conservation measures—a much better use of the money.
The second Bill would be a fair pay Bill, which would set a company-wide pay ratio of 10:1: that is, the lowest paid worker in a company should get 1/10th of what the CEO is paid. You pay the CEO whatever you think he or she is worth but you make sure that your cleaner or your security guard is paid at least 1/10th of that. That would start to rebalance the rich-poor divide that is widening under this Government.
The third Bill would be a public ownership Bill, which would promote public ownership of public services, introduce a presumption in favour of service provision by public sector and not-for-profit entities, and put in place mechanisms to increase the accountability, transparency and public control of public services, including those operated by public companies.
The fourth Bill would be a housing Bill to prevent rent increases above inflation for existing tenants and to increase security of tenure with five-year tenancy agreements. A little of this is being done in London and it looks as though it could be extremely successful. With the problems that we already have with housing in London, it would seem logical to produce something like this.
I do not want to sound alarmist. When I talk about destroying the planet, I am not talking about really destroying the planet; I am talking about destroying the little bit of the planet that we rely on for our existence. The fact is that if we do not take climate change into account, if we continue with business as usual, we are damaging not only our future but that of our children and grandchildren.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I pay great respect to the campaigning zeal of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on climate change and the environment. If I may say so, I share her concern for the environment. I was for six years the chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee in the other place. I hope that we managed to push climate change a little bit up the media agenda during that time. As it happens, I was born in the Bowland area of Lancashire, where fracking for gas has had its first trials. I have therefore studied the issue rather more closely than I have others.
I have to say that although I respect the point of view of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I fundamentally disagree with her on fracking. It seems to me that it will actually lead to greater energy security for this country, it will help with fuel poverty and it will help by creating a new industry—and we badly need to rebalance the economy. It will also help with climate change. One can argue about that, but I think that the dash for gas did help with climate change in the past and this will help in the future. Looking at the local situation in that rather beautiful part of the country, the Bowland area of Lancashire, it would do no more damage to the immediate aesthetic of the environment than do electric pylons and wind farms, to take two examples.
Therefore, I support my noble friend’s remarks in his opening speech and what the Government are doing on new measures to help fracking. I was glad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in his opening speech, that the Labour Party also supports this. It is profoundly in our national interest that the reserves underneath our feet should be exploited, whichever party is in power, frankly.
One thing I liked about the Queen’s Speech was that it was relatively short. I am all in favour of brevity—I hope I do not disprove that with the length of my speech now—particularly in legislation. This may be a product of advancing age but I like to think it is actually a product of advancing wisdom. If we have fewer Bills—I think 11 are promised in this Session of Parliament, although no doubt there will be a certain amount of creep in addition to that—against 28 in the previous Session, which is quite a reduction, it means that Bills can be both better drafted and better scrutinised by your Lordships’ House. I also think it will mean less time spent by Ministers rushing around dealing with issues in Parliament and more time for good governance.
It is good governance that really matters in this country at the moment. More than ever, if we look at the global situation with China, Russia, India and so forth developing as they are, the UK needs excellent governance and I believe that in the present coalition we have a good, radical, progressive Government who are doing broadly the right thing. An example of that is how on the very first day of the Queen’s Speech debate they have flagged up the issues of infrastructure, transport, energy and local government that are at the heart of the need to improve things—as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and others said in the debate—together with skills and education. They are the twin tracks of necessary improvement which we need to grasp very firmly.
As regards transport, first, I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Kramer has at last got a task worthy of her talents and that she has thrown herself into it with such evident enthusiasm. I am a strong supporter of HS2, at least partly because, as I said, I am from the north of England originally. I was born in Lancashire, educated in Yorkshire and for 13 years I represented a constituency in the north-east of England. I am a sort of northern mongrel, but I therefore claim to have some understanding of the problems of the north. Transport-wise, what the north needs is good connections with the Midlands and the south. Good connections will enhance people’s confidence in that part of the world in building businesses in the north.
At the moment, rail capacity is strained to the limit and, indeed, beyond. There are queues at Euston and King’s Cross at certain times of the day. There is no doubt that we need new capacity and that, just as Ernest Marples, many years ago, started building the new motorways separate from the old trunk roads, we should build a new rail route that is distinct from the old Victorian lines. There is really no alternative.
None the less, I am conscious of the demands which HS2 will make on the communities and individuals affected by the route, and I believe that the Government should be generous in those circumstances—they never have been generous enough in the past—in terms of both mitigation measures and, where necessary, compensation. The only thing I found odd about the recent review by Sir David Higgins is that he thought that the link between HS1 and HS2 at Euston and St Pancras should be reconsidered. That baffles me. I thought that part of the point was that you could get on a train in Birmingham and get off at Brussels. Nigel Farage may not agree, but to me that makes total sense. I hope that my noble friend will reconsider that and keep it in the programme.
In addition to greater rail capacity, we need more motorways and trunk roads. On a journey to the Ribble Valley up the M6 in the recess, I was struck once again by how the slightest hiccup—a small accident or some roadworks—can reduce the traffic to a stationary state for mile after mile. Many motorways are now often a nightmare to travel on. I am not an advocate of predict and provide but, none the less, we need more provision. I was pleased by the sentence in the Queen’s Speech on that and by the further details indicated by my noble friend in his opening speech, although I have to say that the point about the A14 made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is absolutely relevant. I opened the Cambridge section of the A14 when I was a Minister for Transport 25 years ago, one grim pre-Christmas day, and it has crawled and stuttered along since then.
Then there is the thorny question of London’s airport capacity. Obviously my noble friend will not be able to say much about that because the situation is under review, but from the perspective of someone who is not only a northerner but has been an MP for a London constituency during my career and has run an international business from London, I have no doubt that we need a third runway at Heathrow.
I was in Dubai recently. Dubai has recently taken over from Heathrow as the busiest international airport. Paul Griffiths, the English managing director of Dubai Airport, has taken it to the top in seven years and is worth listening to on the subject of the third runway. His opinion is that Heathrow must have a third runway, even though it will mean more competition for Dubai. He said in the Sunday Times recently:
“Britain needs it, and Heathrow is the right place for it. It is close to London and close to all the major motorways. An airport”—
this is significant—
“is only as good as its ground transport links”.
I hope that Sir Howard Davies and my noble friend are listening. Again, one has to be sympathetic to local noise problems, and really good compensation—I hear talk of 25% above pre-blighted market value—is the right approach.
Finally, I turn to housing, which has been much commented on during our debate. The Government’s Help to Buy scheme has undoubtedly kick-started construction, and I also support garden cities, but those initiatives by themselves and the other small ones cannot hope to fill the gap of about 200,000 homes a year that we need. That can come only from a concerted, Government-led effort involving housing associations and local councils. More than two years ago I wrote a memo for the Government advocating that they emulate the 1951 Conservative Government, when Harold Macmillan was appointed Housing Minister and given the target by Winston Churchill of building 300,000 houses a year—it seems a miracle, does it not?—which he achieved in three years. Incidentally, Britain’s debt to GDP ratio at the time was 200%, so no excuses there.
Obviously, I accept that things have changed a lot since 1954 when Harold Macmillan achieved all that. The planning laws, in particular, have become much more complex, but as one who started a successful housing association back in the 1970s, I know what can be done if the political will is there and the incentives for housing associations and local councils are structured in the right way. I very much hope that the Government will bring forward an initiative of that kind in the not-too-distant future so that we can look at it in the context of the next general election.
So there are holes in the Government’s programme—in particular, on Heathrow and on housing—but, broadly speaking, they are moving the country in the right direction. All I can say is: please get a move on.
Viscount Simon (Lab)
My Lords, I should declare my interests as in the register, as I will be speaking about practical matters of concern which some might consider as coming into the subject of transport, but which were not covered in the gracious Speech.
The number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads was predicted to fall by 2030 in an academic study published by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. I hope that that proves to be correct, but I have my concerns about sufficient suitably trained roads-policing officers being available to enforce the laws. I suspect that few noble Lords will have seen a marked traffic car on a motorway for a long time, and that is the same for criminals, who go from A to B knowing that the chances of being stopped are very remote. The number has been reduced and is being reduced further. In some areas, driver training has also been reduced. I wonder whether, in the not-too-distant future, there will be enough officers to train other officers in the special investigatory skills required following a road death or serious injury.
Further, as more emphasis has been placed on investigating serious accidents, the resource that does that has been withdrawn from roads, meaning that there is less deterrent to prevent such accidents. That is set, as I have already said, against a background of reducing the number of trained officers. Why are those reductions taking place? All police forces are having to reduce operational and administrative costs and, as the cost associated with running traffic operations is high, it is an area that is financially attractive to chief constables in assisting them to achieve the Government’s requirements.
The Institute of Advanced Motorists, under a freedom of information question on excessive speed, has drawn attention to the fact that there is a good need for a deterrent presence of roads-policing officers out there on the road, ready and willing to deal with those who misbehave deliberately. Driving at 149 miles per hour, which was the speed of one of the drivers mentioned in the article, is a deliberate act, not an error.
We all think that it is awful when we read of drivers with points over the maximum of 12, but there are some out there with more than 40 points on their licences. The information available to the courts needs to be up to date, but that is not always the case, I have been told. I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that not only the DVLA but the courts need to be both efficient and quick in updating their records accurately.
I was interested to read a newspaper article about young drivers being involved in more road accidents than others as a percentage of all drivers. We all remember when we passed our driving tests and thought that we were the best drivers in the world but, since those days, road and traffic conditions have changed. The time is ripe for introducing special conditions to be imposed on young drivers and for them to have graduated licences. This is a road safety proposal and not, as the Government have stated, a restriction on their driving. We all know that, in time, we learn by experience and I hope that the Government will introduce appropriate legislation.
On a completely different matter, which has been raised, the European Union has proposed that diagnostic software chips are placed in all new vehicles in the near future, which would enable authorised people to interpret what a car and driver was doing at a particular time. This would have extremely useful implications, which I leave noble Lords to work out for themselves. I imagine that the insurance industry, the police and some other departments would welcome this, whereas certain motorists would say that it was an invasion of their privacy.
The Government’s efforts to make speeding and other driver misbehaviour gain the stigma of being regarded as anti-social needs to be maintained and not allowed to decrease. Much of that is about the visibility of ministerial and government leadership. At the moment we hear and see little of this, despite the huge total cost of road deaths and serious injury collisions increasing every year.
The Law Commission’s final report and draft Bill retains and strengthens the existing, two-tier system between taxis and private hire and sets national standards, which are based on those currently in force in London under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998. I understand that the private hire industry broadly welcomes the proposed reforms and I look forward to the Minister confirming that the Government intend to bring forward those proposals. It had been my intention to mention other disturbing matters, including the background to the proposed taxi demonstration on 11 June, but I think that I have said enough.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, a number of speakers have said that this debate on the gracious Speech gives us an opportunity to assess the success of the coalition Government as they enter their fifth year. The speech reminds us that the Government have a long-term plan to rebuild our economy which, if it is to be achieved, requires further reductions in the deficit and continued low interest rates. I subscribe to that aim. The Government’s overall debt continues to rise and the only way of controlling and reducing it is to reduce the annual deficit. Of course, the deficit will be reduced if tax revenues rise but for tax revenues to rise we need growth, and growth will be encouraged by continuing low interest rates. That is particularly important for those parts of the UK which have higher than average unemployment rates. That is why I am pleased that the Bank of England did not seek to raise the base rate when unemployment fell below 7% nationally. The continued recovery needs low interest rates to encourage business investment.
In this respect, I am particularly impressed by the recent performance of the small business sector and welcome the small business, enterprise and employment Bill which, for the first time, specifically addresses the needs of the country’s 4.9 million small businesses. Small firms have been responsible for four in five jobs created during the three years between 2010 and 2013. In addition, nine out of 10 unemployed people either found work in a small firm or started their own business in that period. I welcome the proposals to help small businesses grow, not least in procurement policy, where Whitehall has been too keen to push procurement contracts towards large national companies, mostly headquartered in the south-east, and away from regionally based companies which are smaller but nevertheless have excellent track records in delivery and localised training. The test of that Bill will be whether the Government deliver their procurement ambitions. The Government say that they want to provide small firms with fair access to the £230 billion spent each year in the form of public procurement contracts, so I hope it will become clearer how this will be done when we discuss the detail of the Bill.
Overall, the recovery cannot just be about cutting the deficit and I welcome the emphasis in the gracious Speech on growth, infrastructure investment and access to finance, not least because the outcomes from Funding for Lending have been lower than we would wish. The Bank of England recently reported that Funding for Lending had fallen by £2.7 billion. In recent months, it has been only for business lending and not housing. However, the evidence seems to be that lending to SMEs has not been boosted. It could be that crowd funding and peer-to-peer lending are rising and accounting for part of that gap but it is vital that small businesses can borrow more from the banks.
The potential of the small business sector is very great. A few days ago I visited a small but fast-growing precision engineering company, Chirton Engineering, which is to host the new North East Advanced Machining Academy. The academy is the product of work by Tyne Metropolitan College, working in collaboration with Chirton Engineering, Tyne North Training and North Tyneside Council, and it will enable students to be trained to the highest of standards on specialist machines and ensure that apprentices are job-ready for their first day on the factory floor. What particularly impressed me was the integration of an expanding business with training and apprenticeships in engineering, and with excellent linkages to local schools.
I spoke earlier about the opportunity that this debate gives us to comment on the Government’s achievements, and apprenticeships are one of them. I congratulate Ministers, particularly BIS Secretary of State Vince Cable, on their determination to give young people the opportunity to learn on the job. Some 1.6 million apprenticeships have been created since the 2010 election, and I welcome the plan to build that further to 2 million apprenticeships by 2015. I do not want to be overcritical of the previous Government, but the Future Jobs Fund was expensive. Each placement cost up to £6,500 and created short-term placements, predominantly in the public sector. Half of Future Jobs Fund participants went straight back on to benefits after the six-month job ended. What this Government have done, and are continuing to do, is proving much more sustainable.
A number of speakers today have talked about the commitment in the gracious Speech to increase housing supply. I welcome that because the shortage of affordable housing, both to buy and to rent, is becoming critical. While there is some evidence that Help to Buy is not by itself creating a bubble in London and that it seems to be working in the regions, the fact remains that the affordability gap has risen to almost 10 times average salary in 2013. That is not sustainable.
The problem is a shortage of supply. Rightly, the Government plan to increase supply, but the question is whether they will provide the means at the same time as they desire the end. It is not just about reforming the planning system or, as the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, pointed out, garden cities. It is about providing decent homes for all, which, together with a good education and a secure job, are the foundations of an inclusive society. The Government are planning to do something. It is good to see that they will provide support to smaller builders to develop new homes with a £525 million builders’ finance fund, which will deliver up to 15,000 homes on small sites. The problem is that too many small construction firms—two-thirds of them—closed down when the recession hit. It has become clear that more competition with larger firms is in the public interest. I am also pleased that the Government will introduce a £150 million repayable fund to support up to 10,000 new service plots for custom-build homes, and that there will be further reform to make it easier for empty buildings to be converted into new homes, supporting brownfield regeneration.
Welcome as all these initiatives are, I fear that they will not be enough to deliver the 250,000 homes that the country needs each year over the next few years to meet demand. The Government simply must use every means at their disposal to get councils building again. We have heard what happened in the 1950s and it is entirely possible to do that all over again. As a start, I hope that the remaining cap on local authority borrowing can be removed in its entirety. That would help.
There is mention in the gracious Speech of Scotland, the case for Scotland staying in the UK and the implementation of new powers. The gracious Speech says:
“My government will continue to implement new financial powers for the Scottish Parliament and make the case for Scotland to remain a part of the United Kingdom”.
It is the first part of this that I want to look at more closely because I think it has profound implications for English local government. I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association. The issue is going to be this: once the referendum is done and dusted, who raises what taxation? Too often over the past two to three decades, the issue has always been that money is disbursed from London. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Flight about the £70 billion that is effectively transferred from London and the south-east, in terms of public spending, to other parts of the United Kingdom. That is a very large sum of money. The time is coming when all parts of the UK, if we are not to have a continued centralised state in London, are going to have to take greater responsibility for raising the sums that they spend.
There has been devolution in the past three years to local enterprise partnerships, to local councils and to combinations of local councils in the form of combined authority, but that question of who raises what taxation is rising up the agenda. I think that there is greater awareness of this now in England; there certainly is in Wales. There are pilots, of course, not least the Greater Manchester earn-back model, which gives Greater Manchester a half share in the increase of all taxation. However, English local government now needs to be fleet of foot and help to define and drive forward the devolution agenda, because we know from European experience that devolved power drives faster growth and we need to replicate that across the UK.
Devolution in transport funding is well under way and Ministers and the DfT should be congratulated on that. For one thing, it will require local areas to prioritise their projects. Wish lists are all very fine, but if local government wants to make a success of devolved powers it simply must be able to prioritise across council boundaries.
In conclusion, I shall say three things. I have been very impressed by the contribution of the Governor of the Bank of England. His points about inequality, the overdominance of London and the potential of a housing bubble in London have been well made. I am much more positive about London than some other speakers have been. It is possible that part of the growth of London is cyclical, but clearly not all of it is. London is producing high tax revenues that get recycled to others and a large number of jobs for people across the United Kingdom. For me, London’s success is a success for the United Kingdom. We have to bear in mind that London has a very strong economy, but the part of the UK that has highest rate of child poverty is immediately adjacent to the City of London and is the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, so the problems of equality are not just between London and the rest of the country but within London. These are major issues for politicians of all parties. There is clear evidence that, even if you take out expenditure on Crossrail, more capital infrastructure funding has been spent in London than in other parts of the United Kingdom. That needs to be reversed.
I note the comments that have been made about devolution. This Government have done far more than any previous Government on devolving to the constituent parts of England. However, it takes time to be a success. The process has been going for just over three years. One of the things I have learnt in the work that I have been doing is that you need a structure to devolve to. It often has to be a structure that transcends individual council boundaries. I see the city deals process and the local growth deals as a step in a long-term process that moves greater decision-making out of London.
Finally, I think we are starting to see the green shoots of growth in a whole set of ways. The gracious Speech identifies the strengths that this coalition Government have produced. As long as we bear in mind all the warnings that we have heard about rising inequalities, that growth agenda can continue to be supported.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Deighton for his excellent introduction to today’s debate and congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester on his excellent and thought-provoking maiden speech. Yesterday, I was able to listen to the excellent speech by my noble friend Lord Fowler, which was entertaining and informative, proposing the Motion for an humble Address. As he rightly pointed out, it is a great pity that our noble friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches were unable to support the totally justified constituency boundaries proposals. It is widely but mistakenly believed outside the House that their position on that was justified by the fact that your Lordships’ House declined to support proposals for its reform, whereas, as your Lordships are well aware, the quid pro quo for the parliamentary boundaries Bill was actually the referendum on adopting the alternative vote system, which was granted to our coalition partners but was decisively rejected by the electorate.
The gracious Speech states that the Government will work to promote reform in the European Union, including a stronger role for member states and national Parliaments. I trust that the Minister will make clear whether a stronger role for member states actually means repatriation of powers over certain areas of our national life. In particular, I believe we strongly need to recover full control of our financial markets and their regulation. The FCA and the PRA should sit at the same table as the EBA, ESMA and EIOPA and should not be subordinate to them. The latter three should be the regulators for the financial markets of the eurozone countries. The recent European elections, albeit on a low turnout, show clearly how important people think this matter is, and I look forward to the next Government being able to negotiate a better settlement with our European partners. It is a pity that negotiations with them cannot start until after the general election in May 2015.
In connection with that, I have to say that I do not think the adoption of fixed-term Parliaments has necessarily been a good thing. If we have to have fixed-term Parliaments, I believe the term should be four years rather than five. The average term of Parliaments since the Second World War has been rather less than four years, and those countries that have adopted the fixed-term Parliament system in the main provide an opportunity for the people to elect their representatives once in four years or less. In the United States, it is four years; in Australia, a Parliament can run for a maximum of three years. Furthermore, it makes our political life rather dull if there is no opportunity to speculate on the timing of the general election. Ironically, the absence of speculation on timing probably limits the power of the electorate against that of the Executive even though, theoretically, the reverse is the case. I understand the reasons why the coalition Government decided to adopt the fixed-term Parliament principle four years ago, but many people feel that this Parliament is already a little bit stale. It is a pity that the Prime Minister does not have the opportunity to go to the country for nearly another year. That is notwithstanding the notable achievements of the coalition Government in saving the economy from the disaster for which it was headed.
The next Conservative Government will need to start the urgent task of negotiating with the European Union as early as possible. To start only after May 2015 does not allow much time to negotiate both real reform to the structures of the Union and the repatriation of powers over matters better decided at the nation state’s level. This will be extremely complicated and needs to be agreed with our partners before a new basis for membership can be put to the people in the referendum promised for 2017.
Although I do not think that fixed-term Parliaments are a good thing for all time, I must congratulate the coalition Government on all that they have achieved in their four years to date. They have clearly confounded the sceptics who denied the reality of the recovery that has been taking place, and the reduction in the budget deficit has been much greater than many had predicted. This has been recognised by the IMF. Also, the employment statistics are most encouraging. It is heartening to know that we have recently been more successful than any other G7 country in reducing our deficit.
Although it is not the subject of today’s debate, the centrepiece of the gracious Speech was the proposals to reform the pension system. I believe that the automatic enrolment pensions which were introduced two or so years ago have met with only limited success. I ask the Minister whether these reforms to workplace pensions are intended to replace the auto-enrolment pensions or to supplement them. The Government’s press release states:
“By no longer forcing people to buy an annuity we are giving them total control over the money that they have put aside over their lifetime and greater financial security in their old age”.
I am very clear that it will give them greater freedom and control. As for greater financial security, I am not quite sure that that will necessarily follow.
I am not quite sure why the measures concerning pensions reform are not combined into a single Bill. The pensions tax Bill provides the freedom for individuals aged 55 or over to have free access to their savings held in defined contribution schemes subject to paying tax at their marginal rates at the time of draw-down. However, it is the private pensions Bill which would allow the Department for Work and Pensions to decide whether to allow recipients of defined benefit schemes similar access to their savings or not. While I welcome the Government’s decision to give individuals the right to access their defined contribution pension pots in principle, it is important that an appropriate health warning is provided to those exercising their new freedom. Those who buy an annuity today can still receive a return of more than 5% and do not bear the risk that they may not receive this return for the 40 years or so that they may well live after retirement. Those who withdraw their funds and invest them in managed funds or a mixed portfolio would do well to receive higher returns than they would from an annuity. The impression given recently by the media is that the pensions industry has been exploiting people’s savings by providing poor returns and applying hidden charges. This is less than fair. To purchase an annuity on retirement will still be the best course of action for many.
I note the Government’s plan to introduce a third type of pension: defined ambition schemes. Under these schemes, risks will be shared between pensioner and provider. It will be interesting to see in what terms “ambition” will be defined by pension providers and whether prospective contributors to such schemes will have similar ambitions.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was too dismissive of many of the measures in the gracious Speech. The Federation of Small Businesses has warmly welcomed the small business Bill. The childcare payments Bill has also been widely welcomed. The Government propose to make childcare tax deductable to the extent of £2,000 per annum per child. This amount is, of course, not nearly enough, but it is nevertheless very welcome.
I strongly support the opinion expressed by my noble friend Lady Noakes that too little has been done to simplify tax and it is disappointing that the gracious Speech contains no Bill to achieve this. The combination of income tax and national insurance makes a great deal of sense. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the Government will commit to move ahead with this.
I strongly agree with my noble friend Lord Marlesford in what he had to say about the EU financial transaction tax and hope the Minister can assure the House that London will be completely protected from the negative effects of this tax.
I strongly support the Government’s proposals to stimulate investment in shale gas projects included in the Infrastructure Bill. Shale gas can certainly provide an economic and relatively clean contribution to our energy mix. However, the best and ultimately most economic way to obtain energy security in the nick of time is to accelerate the development of new nuclear power stations. Hinkley Point is a start, but much more progress needs to be made soon with the other proposed projects.
It has been a privilege to participate in this debate. Even if this Parliament is already a little stale, we will have plenty to do. I look forward to the remaining speeches and especially the Minister’s winding up.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I may suggest to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that although Parliament may be stale, we in your Lordships’ House never are—we are always fresh.
Surely one of the tests of the efficacy of a legislative programme is what it does to our society and whether it offers more help to those who have not very much or to those who already have a great deal. I will be testing the gracious Speech on its effect on equality in our economy.
The government parties, not surprisingly, are very keen on a programme that appeals both to their own party members and to their electoral interests, and let us be clear: this gracious Speech is mostly about those things. On the other hand, we on this side are seeking more—much more—for families and individuals whose lives are often a struggle and who rightly feel that this Government do not have their interests at heart. How are they served by this legislative programme? What will this government programme do for the 1 million young people who are unemployed and were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Adonis in his opening remarks? I looked in vain to find anything. What in this programme will help people with disabilities who are struggling with the cruel complexities of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms? Again, I looked in vain.
What in this programme will deal with the fact that childcare costs have risen by 77% in the past 10 years? Of course I welcome the late-in-the-day proposal that tax-free childcare worth up to £2,000 is coming on stream. However, it is too little too late, and why not this year instead of next? Just one in five families will receive help through tax-free childcare. Some 4 million families on universal credit could be waiting until 2017 or later for any extra help. That is three times as many as the number of those who will benefit from the tax-free childcare scheme.
What is in this programme for the low paid? Many of them are resorting to food banks, because high rents and fuel bills and their low pay mean that they cannot afford all the food that their families need. I looked in vain for that, too.
Figures from the House of Commons, analysed by the TUC, reveal that, nationally, one in five jobs pay under the living wage. As is so often the case, the situation for women workers is even worse. The most striking example in this research is in Kingswood, in the south-west of England, where over 56% of women employees are paid less than the living wage. I looked at this legislative programme for what would help those women workers, but I looked in vain.
Like my right honourable friend Ed Miliband, I welcome what can be welcomed, particularly where Labour set the agenda anyway, as we did on the childcare proposals. On the national minimum wage, Labour has committed to raising it to a higher proportion of average earnings and to improving enforcement, with penalties increased to up to £50,000 for non-payment. So while we welcome the £20,000 penalty that is proposed in the gracious Speech, we do not think that it goes far enough. Labour has committed to banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, including ensuring that those who work regular hours month after month get a regular contract. Of course, we also welcome the ban in the Queen’s Speech on exclusivity clauses that stop workers on zero-hours contracts from working for another employer, but it does not go far enough.
On childcare, we have announced plans to help working parents with 25 hours of free childcare for three and four year-olds. The childcare proposals in the Queen’s Speech do not match our plans, and they do not make up for the childcare crunch of reduced support. On the gender pay gap, if this Government had continued to make the same rate of progress that we have made in government on closing the gender pay gap, women would get £177 a year more in their pay packets. As my honourable friend Gloria De Piero has said:
“David Cameron likes to paint a rosy picture when it comes to women in work but the reality for most women struggling with the cost-of-living crisis is that things are getting worse for them and their families”.
She also said that,
“44 years on from the Equal Pay Act being passed, women are still earning 80p for every pound men earn”.
Why is addressing the inequalities in our economy so important? I take women in our economy as an example of how counterproductive, piecemeal, traditional, short-sighted and often punitive the economic and social programme of this Government has often been. I draw on three impeccable sources—the McKinsey Women Matter series, the TUC and the Maternity Alliance. Every year since 2007, McKinsey has produced a report about the economic value of women in business and, particularly, in the boardroom. The TUC represents millions of women workers. Both organisations agree, in their own way, about the underperformance of the UK in the economy and business due to the barriers that women face at work. McKinsey has discovered that companies in the top quartile for female representation—the top 25% of companies in terms of the share of women on their executive committees—perform significantly better than companies with no women at the top. They have on average 47% higher equity returns and 55% higher earnings before tax and interest. Companies that have no women on boards earn less and perform worse than those with women on them. Diversity leads to prosperity.
I turn to the question of women’s representation in boardrooms, which has improved partly because of the work done by people like my noble friend Lord Davies in his report. I am very pleased and welcome the support that the Government have given to this and the targets that he set. I am very pleased about the increase of the number of women on boards in FTSE 100 companies, from 12.5% in 2011 to over 21% in May this year. That is to be welcomed. However, the fact that there are only four female chief executives in the FTSE 100 is simply not good enough. In his latest report, my noble friend Lord Davies said:
“Gender balance makes good business sense. Women make up over half of the UK population, account for nearly half of the working population, outperform men educationally and are responsible for the majority of the household purchasing decisions”.
The problem is that women are basically outnumbered at all levels of the pipeline to the top. It is not so much a glass ceiling as, as the Chartered Management Institute describes it, a “glass obstacle course”. In March this year, the TUC analysis of the 10 best-paid and the 10 worst-paid occupations in the UK showed a stark gender divide. Nearly two-thirds of the 900,000 employees in the best-paid occupations, such as financial managers and medical practitioners, are male. Legal professionals, head teachers and college principals are the only top-paying occupations that employ more women than men.
There is also a lack of part-time positions in the top jobs. Employees are half as likely to work part time in top-paying professions, at a rate of 13.7%, as they are in the rest of the labour market, at 28.3%. Among chief executives and senior officials, the best-paying occupations in the UK with an average hourly wage of £43.17 an hour, just 6.6% of employees work part time and only one in four is female.
In contrast, of course, the lowest-paid occupations, such as retail assistants and cleaners, are dominated by women and part-time work. Of the 2.6 million employees in the 10 lowest-paying occupations, where average hourly wages range from £6.20 to £6.82, 1.7 million employees are female and 1.8 million work part time. The concentration of women and part-time workers in the UK’s low-wage sectors shows why fair pay remains such a big issue for women and why part-time work so often pushes working women into poverty, and thus their families too.
The virtual elimination of the gender pay gap for full-time workers under 40 years of age will be of little comfort to the millions of women who have had to trade down jobs or put their careers on hold to find work that fits round their childcare or caring responsibilities. Surely a great lack of imagination and a clinging to traditional ways are indicated by the fact that the opportunities to ask for part-time work, flexible working and reduced hours on returning from maternity leave are generally restricted to fairly low-level positions and to women who are already well established in their jobs.
That leads me to the issue of having children and what happens in the workplace. The Maternity Alliance says in its recent report that in 2005—three years before the global financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent recession—a landmark study by the Equal Opportunities Commission found that half of all pregnant women suffered a related disadvantage at work, and that each year 30,000 were forced out of their jobs. That is a shocking and disgraceful finding. However, eight years on, all the available evidence suggests that such pregnancy and maternity discrimination is now more common than ever before, and that as many as 60,000 women are pushed out of work each year. Faced with mounting evidence of this proliferation of pregnancy and maternity discrimination, key government Ministers have until very recently simply denied that there is a problem. In November, however, in announcing £1 million of funding to enable the Equality and Human Rights Commission to undertake a new study of this issue, the Government seemed finally to accept that such unlawful discrimination,
“remains prevalent and more needs to be done to tackle it”.
That realisation has come a bit late, however, and there has still been no action.
Unfortunately, the Government have introduced a number of measures that make it harder for women to tackle such discrimination. Access to free employment advice has been restricted and almost all civil legal aid has disappeared. The questionnaire procedure in employment tribunal discrimination claims, which facilitates the revealing of crucial information held by the employer which is otherwise not available to the claimant, is set to be abolished in April 2014. That is a great shame and the Benches opposite should think very carefully about its implications. Perhaps most damagingly of all, since July 2013, those wishing to pursue a tribunal claim for pregnancy, maternity or other discrimination must pay up to £1,200 in upfront tribunal fees. It is difficult enough to take forward a claim against your employer, but then to have to find £1,200 before you start is both shocking and discriminatory. Surely the message from the Government to employers should be that an economic recession and hard times are no excuse to flout the law.
I could give other examples, but what it all adds up to is a Government who really do not get it when it comes to women and the workplace. At best, the Government make the right noises, as the Minister did in his opening remarks. In particular, individual women inside the Government have been working hard on this issue. However the product—that is, the prospects for women—still looks like the same old same traditional way of running our economy and businesses. Just to make sure that it was really difficult to find out the equality impact of government policy, one of the first things they did was to stop counting that impact in any meaningful way.
Working women therefore need a Labour Government to tackle the scandal of low pay by substantially increasing the value of the minimum wage, end the abuse of zero-hours contracts, guarantee mums and dads in work 25 hours of free childcare for three and four year-olds, and give all parents of primary school children access to childcare through their schools from 8 am to 6 pm. Actually, we need a Labour Government.
Lord Flight
My Lords, it was healthy to see that the gracious Speech put in big letters up front that the key objective was to get the economy growing. That must surely be in the interests of all people. I cannot help thinking that that is not a bad criterion against which to measure individual policies: are they going to be good or bad for economic growth? Perhaps if President Hollande had done that, he would have avoided causing the French economy so much damage.
I add my congratulations to the Chancellor on having got our economy back to decent growth. I well remember that not long ago the IMF was rapping us over the knuckles, saying that we had not got it right. In a sense, you cannot blame the Labour Party for offering criticism; it is its job to oppose. However, three years ago I predicted that growth in the UK would be 3% by the time of the 2015 election. At that time people thought that I was not being particularly sensible, but that is about what it will be. As has been pointed out, this has been achieved while inflation remains healthily under 2%.
In essence, the Chancellor has taught Hayek but mostly done Keynes by printing £180 billion of money and continuing to run a budgetary deficit of well over £100 billion. If that is not Keynes, I am not sure what is, but it is fair to say that that was needed after a 7% crash in the British economy, just as Keynes was needed and was successful in the 1930s. The issue is when you turn down the Keynesian gas and revert to more standard economic management.
I also particularly welcomed in the gracious Speech the incentives for shale gas exploitation, the new collective defined contributions pension schemes and the proposals for streamlining planning approvals. Two of my children and I have been involved in the planning process over the past year. It is a complete nightmare and extremely expensive, involving environmental this and planning that—all for fairly simple and straightforward things. It is blindingly obvious that the problem is lack of supply because of the extent to which our planning system has become so complicated.
I have only one reservation for the near term: I hope that the Bank of England does not leave it too late to start to nudge up interest rates, particularly given that the economy has returned to normal, because the obvious risk is that when rates are increased they will have to be put up by a greater quantum, which would have more of a shock effect on the economy at the time.
However, we are not adequately talking about two big issues. One is that, taken together, health spending and the totality of welfare expenditure are now running at around £350 billion per annum—close to half of all government spending. As Mrs Merkel said in a different way, that expenditure is growing much faster than tax revenues or the economy. It is simply not sustainable in the long term, and it is particularly in the areas of welfare spending and the unfunded costs of ageing that Governments are going to have to think again. If they do not, there will be major economic problems in the future.
This is also reflected by the fact that we currently have a structural deficit of around £100 billion per annum. Although some of that can be addressed—as much as possible, we hope by economic growth and rising tax revenues, I do not think it will all be dealt with thus. We have reached the stage of economic recovery where those issues need to be thought about in a little greater depth and the can cannot be kicked down the road.
The second issue is savings and productivity performance. We need a savings rate of around 10%; it is more like 3%. Productivity growth since 2005 has been virtually zero overall. Manufacturing productivity has grown reasonably, but in the service industry—unbelievably—it has declined. The two obviously interrelate, in part because savings equals investment: if we have low savings we are likely to get low investment. However, that is not the only cause. Low levels of saving have been a major cause of poor productivity growth for over a decade. One cannot but observe that this goes back to the introduction of tax credits around 2004. I remember when the Heath Government brought in similar proposals to subsidise employment with their negative income tax proposals. The then leadership of the Labour Party—I use their arguments from 2004-05—warned that, if we do subsidise employment, we run the risk of having excessive employment in areas that are not growing, of discouraging people from getting skilled up, and of damaging productivity growth, just as the Speenhamland system did in the early part of the 19th century. The whole equation of savings, productivity growth and tax credits needs to be looked at in a little more depth.
Since 1997, the savings rate has also been driven down by the destruction of what was the best pension system in Europe. That destruction has been caused partly by overburdening final salary schemes, partly by the 1997 tax rate and partly by continuous tinkering with the rules. I very much hope that the gracious Speech will mark much more constructive thinking by the Government about pensions and retirement saving. That is how we can practically get the savings rate back up and generate the funds we need for investment in this country.
Again, a by-product of the inadequate savings rate has been, as I think was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, a current account deficit that has now risen to over 5%. For nearly 20 years we have financed that by selling off companies and the family silver. I will not say that that is running out, but there may come a time when it will not be in the national interest to keep on selling assets to pay for current consumption.
I repeat that there has not been in economic policy an adequate focus on the two key areas of savings and productivity growth, but there are three good news territories that I will focus on which I see in the commercial bit of my life. One is a wonderful explosion in entrepreneurship and a new-technology industrial revolution that is going on. I have to admit that a lot of the latter is in London—I will come back to that point—but I do not believe that the figure of 4.5 million self-employed is a reflection on people not being able to get contractual work; I think that a lot of it is voluntary. Something like one-third of young people now want to be entrepreneurs. In my generation everyone wanted to be a civil servant or work for a large corporation. Now, people are much bolder and much more imaginative, and this country, more than any other, is really exploiting the new technology that is coming up. Therefore, I think that there is very good news for the future beneath the surface.
Secondly, I think that we should welcome and not resent the success of London. Jobs in London are reckoned to be 39% more productive than jobs in the rest of the UK. It has more people employed in highly skilled, knowledge-based industries than any capital anywhere in the world. At the end of the day, this is generating the tax revenues that will help stimulate other parts of the country. I find it disappointing when people talk almost in terms of being jealous of London’s success because it is not matched at present by parallel success in other parts of the country. Let us remember that in the 19th century Manchester and Birmingham were doing brilliantly and London was not doing so well. Therefore, things swing to and fro.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I do not recall anybody saying that they resented the success of London. We have two economies in the United Kingdom that are getting further and further apart, and it is going to be very hard not only in economic terms but in terms of social cohesion if that continues. Many people made that argument but I did not hear anybody say that they resented London’s success.
Lord Flight
If the noble Lords thinks about it, that is just what he has implied. Effectively, he is saying that if London were not so successful the UK would be more homogeneous and that would be better. I am saying that we should use London’s success to earn the money to help pay for new investment in other parts of the country and the transfer payments that are needed. That is what is actually happening. I think that we should take a positive view of London’s success and not a negative view because other parts of the country are not doing as well at present.
I close with my third area of good news. When I looked at the Government’s infrastructure plan back in about 1911—I am sorry, 2011; I am much older than I look—I asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury when these things were going to happen but he could not give me an answer. I am delighted to hear today from my noble friend Lord Deighton about all that is now happening, and I congratulate him on having really got things going. The plans were there but we had all manner of burdens and hurdles to get over to make things happen. It is good news that they are now happening, as those infrastructure investments are badly needed. Therefore, I end on what I view as three very positive things for this economy.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Flight, who, like the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, who spoke earlier, has been a dedicated and engaged member of Sub-Committee A with our inquiries into European Union financial and economic regulation. I join in the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who is a more recent recruit to that committee.
I hope that I will give some comfort to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on one of the subjects that our committee has tackled: the financial transaction tax and our potential alienation from the wider European Union. To his credit, the Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated that the health of the UK economy depended on the health of the eurozone. To his discredit, now that the eurozone has recovered under the decisive leadership of the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, George Osborne has claimed that the faltering UK recovery was all his own work. However, a faltering UK economy it was and is, and the ambition of the Chancellor to rebalance that economy has palpably failed. Those are not just my words but those of the European Commission. In its recent pronouncements on the European Semester process, with which members of Sub-Committee A are all too familiar, it identified some of the shortcomings within the United Kingdom’s economy: for example, the public finances still being in excessive deficit, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Flight; the failure to broaden tax breaks; and the distortions in property taxation.
As regards the financial sector, I welcome the Bill on small businesses, which I hope we can explore further. The distortions of the housing market most recently were criticised on the “Today” programme by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, who described the Help to Buy measure as simply a sticking plaster. As the European Commissioner rightly said, we need a further boost to housing supply. Let us remember those golden days when Lord Macmillan was Housing Minister and we built 300,000 homes a year, as well as the house price increases that have happened in the United Kingdom.
Unlike the Prime Minister, who appears, in the word of Lady Thatcher, frit to tell us the nature of the proposed reforms of the European Union, the CBI has come out with some very clear statements. One concerns the failure in trade, as illustrated earlier by my noble friend Lord Adonis, and our ability as the United Kingdom to succeed in increasing trade. Recently, in a debate in this Chamber, I discussed the imbalanced economy because of our failure in trade; I will not repeat that. However, the siren voices of UKIP suggest that leaving the European Union will somehow return us to cheap butter and lamb from New Zealand: that will not be so. The truth is that the UK trades more with Belgium than with China.
The single European market is the great opportunity for the United Kingdom. It is not just a single market in which we can trade but the incubator for making us more competitive to sell our services and goods in the world outside and to achieve new markets. As for the idea of leaving the European Union, all those massive trade deals—one of which was concluded by the noble Lord, Lord Green, with the WTO, following the Doha round, or the TTIP, which is the great broad alliance of the two major economic continents bestriding the Atlantic and is with us at the moment—would not be achieved for the benefit of British people if we were not part of the European Union. That is not just what I say: President Obama said that, were we to leave in 2017, he did not have the stomach to have a separate trade deal with the United Kingdom.
The CBI’s second point of what we should be doing to reform the European Union is to complete the single market. After all, it was the inspiration of Arthur Cockfield in this House—when he was Mrs Thatcher’s appointed commissioner—which, inspired by Jacques Delors, created the single market, which was the biggest cutter of red tape and bureaucracy throughout the European Union. How nice it would be to hear from a Minister of the Crown that they too believe in the worth of the single market. Mr Cameron has often said that the single market is important but he has done nothing to further United Kingdom domestic and economic interest by extending it. Can the Minister name three examples in the past four years where the United Kingdom working with others has extended and broken down barriers to free and fair trade within the European Union? We have failed to make friends and influence people. As I said earlier, in Sub-Committee A we often talk to the ministries of the United Kingdom Government and ask them not just to block other people but to work and combine with other member states to open up the paths to the freedom of the single market.
The third element that the CBI talked about is the protection of non-eurozone interests and this is where the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, comes in. We have severely criticised the financial transaction tax. But the Government, in their first reply, said that they were for the financial transaction tax, as long as it was applied globally, which was never possible. It would be a huge imposition on the City of London. We have fought that, united, on Sub-Committee A, and I am glad to say that we have finally woken the Government up to take action on that distinct threat to the prosperity of the City of London as the European Union’s—not just the UK’s—premier financial market.
The Liberals are still in confusion. The other day, Danny Alexander said, “Oh yes, the financial transaction tax—that’s fine they can go ahead and do that”. However, the worry that has been expressed by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, is that gradually we will have 18 members of the European Union out of 28 who are part of the eurozone. As more and more join—and they will and they do—our protection, which has been secured by this Government, will fail as the number goes down below four.
Incidentally, colleagues may have heard the other day that Angela Merkel was called up to be on a quiz show in Germany. As we know, she carries around her Blackberry. She was called as part of the quiz where you can phone a friend for help. It was not clear whether the caller was David Cameron, but that seems to be the United Kingdom’s approach: phone a friend. Phone Angela Merkel. She is friends with us and she will see us all right on the night. But the world is changing and we had better wake up. There are more and more members of the European Union’s single market and we had better ensure that when we speak we make friends with everyone, not just Angela Merkel.
Important decisions are shortly to be made about the European Commission’s President. We have taken against Mr Juncker. He is not my favourite person, but there we go. I proposed Pascal Lamy, who recently retired from the WTO, or Christine Lagarde, who of course has been associated with the IMF. They will go before the European Parliament to be interrogated by MEPs as part of the democratic process. Andrew Lansley has possibly been identified as our potential commissioner. Why should he not come before a Select Committee of the House of Lords? Why should he not, as part of his learning process about the European Union, come before us? We have been saying on the Select Committee that we should increase the work of national Parliaments in the scrutiny of the European Union. There is a ready example. Perhaps the Minister would like to reply to that suggestion.
The European parliamentary elections have been broadly misread. The two major pro-European Union blocs will remain in the European Parliament—the EPP and the Socialists and Democrats group. Apparently the socialists are now democratic, although that was not the case when I was there: we were simply socialists. I thought that would be of interest.
I hope that we can ask the media to put the spotlight on the lazy UKIP Members of the European Parliament. I want to pay respect to and say something light about the Liberal Democrats, which happens so rarely in this House. Some outstanding people have been lost in the European parliamentary elections, including Sir Graham Watson, and of course Sharon Bowles is to retire. I hope that they both find a place here. Perhaps I may also mention Cathy Ashton, who has been absolutely outstanding despite the rubbish printed in the press. She has been working hard behind the scenes, just as she did when she was the Leader of this House. She has highlighted a problem for Andrew Lansley. He will not get any sort of economic brief; he will just be given something such as culture, which is fine. However, too few Brits, only 4%, are aspiring to and getting major positions within the European Union, although it is worth noting that some 12% of those positions should be occupied by British civil servants. What can the Government say about that?
I have little to add to the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Adonis, which set out what Labour will do. One of the things we will not do—I am so pleased that our leader has said it—is have this absurd referendum in 2017. Did no civil servant advise the Prime Minister that 2017 is the next time that the presidency of the European Union will be held by the United Kingdom? Imagine being President of the European Union and saying, “Oh, by the way, we are just voting to leave”. That will build confidence enormously.
I did say that small businesses are to feature in a Bill, but I want to conclude with a few words about local authorities. I was a member of Cheshire County Council for a decade, and was very proud to be so. I was also involved in Merseyside. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, gave inspiration to ensuring that we develop more financial and economic centres in Britain than just those in London. I know of the Labour Party’s proposal to set up two banks to help small businesses and the regions. These are areas that need promotion and it is right that we should do so.
In the single market of the European Union we have a golden opportunity. We need to find friends and to speak some of the languages they understand. We need better co-ordination between this Parliament and the European Parliament and the UK Members of it. In that way, we will be able truly to rebalance the economy, which as yet we have failed to do.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, before this debate I contacted two people. I do not know what their political opinions are, but they both run successful SMEs, one in the manufacturing sector with a large proportion of exports of high-value products, and the other in the service sector, whose company has been voted as one of the best companies to work for by its employees. I asked for their opinion of the coalition Government. They both replied in the same way: “We are having good government”. I then asked them what help should be given to SMEs in furthering their businesses. They responded with two points. The first was the need to reform the business rate system, which bears heavily on small businesses, particularly those in the manufacturing sector. The second was that we must not leave Europe. However, we must confront the huge waste of money due to the high salaries and expenses associated with the place, and in echo of the Prime Minister’s words, them being “so bossy”. However, we do not have to leave all this until 2017 or even 2015. We should start arguing for what we want now, because we have a lot of useful suggestions to make.
On the subject of the coalition, I pay tribute to a few of the Ministers in your Lordships’ House. I single out the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lords, Lord Taylor of Holbeach and Lord Nash, as three who have been particularly careful over the past couple of years to engage in the most meaningful consultation. They have attended countless meetings and modified a lot of things in the original Bills before they were carried into law. I must say that, in the 10 years I was here under the Labour Government, I rarely got any concession at all. The process among most of the people on these Benches has been to try to work together even though we have different philosophies.
Turning to transport, I am very concerned that we may be moving into an era of “predict and provide”, when we should be turning to smarter management of a lot of the infrastructure we have. However, the most important thing that I want to say is that the state of structural maintenance of our highways is an absolute disgrace. Everybody gets complaints about potholes. Who exercises proper discipline over the quality of repairs carried out by the utilities that constantly dig up our roads? They do not seal the edges of the holes, so that moisture gets in and the next winter we are back where we started.
One of the major problems is the revenue-capital split of the Treasury. There is a point—I have been through all this on the railways—where heavy structural maintenance should be a capital item. Maintenance is something you carry out two or three times a decade, but structural maintenance you carry out once only 20 or 30 years. These are capital items, and we should look very carefully at the way that they are accounted for. We should concentrate our road investment on the really strategic roads, which have often got bad safety records. The Minister will know that the A1 north of Newcastle going up to Scotland is a particularly bad road, and I hope that she may have some good news for us on this
I turn to the electric railway. We are not going to build any more diesel trains—all new trains will be electric. My conversations with the rolling stock companies lead me to the conclusion that they are absolutely willing to take the risk in financing freight locomotives and new passenger electric rolling stock. I plead with the Minister to let the market decide what they offer and to not let officials keep dipping their hands in subjects which they do not understand. This is all about technical issues of mechanical and civil engineering and does not benefit at all from constant interference.
I turn to some of the irritants—the things that the media seize on and use to beat Governments, whether they are a coalition, Labour or whatever. We have heard today from the Rail Regulator that there was a 5.7% increase in rail passenger journeys last year. The railway is growing very fast, but it is held back, mainly by the procrastination of officials over rolling stock. The time has come for us to not raise rail fares at the end of this year. We have huge growth but it enables the media to portray the industry as being very expensive when in fact, except in a few cases, it is actually quite cheap.
People are equally concerned about energy prices, as many Members have said. Bearing in mind that utility companies generally took far too much money out of people’s pockets, I wonder whether we could have a moratorium on energy prices. I am not saying that we should put a cap on energy prices permanently, but I believe that consumers are due some sort of recompense from these companies.
We know that getting appointments with GPs is very urgently at the top of people’s list of irritants. Strong action to deal with this problem will help keep cases out of hospital and help make people more content with the service.
This party very reluctantly agreed to raise higher education fees and we have suffered for it. But the higher education sector has not responded by giving its students a real increase in value for money. Often people get only about three hours a week of lectures and I do not believe that overall the higher education sector has stepped up to the plate at all. It should be increasing its productivity. It is a perfectly reasonable demand.
Turning back to transport, we have to find a way of making young people’s bus fares more affordable. They often cannot afford a car or transport and often live far from their places of work or education. Much could be done to encourage them. I do not know whether my noble friend the Minister has any news for us but I would like to believe that the progress being made in some parts of the country is being replicated in others.
I was at a conference of the bus industry last week and I am quite clear that the partnership that local authorities can bring about with operators is of enormous benefit. I was talking about Oxfordshire. They had to review all their services in west Oxfordshire. The county and the operators got together. They had £3 million of cuts to be made but the industry found, by various manipulations, £2.7 million out of that. So there was a very small reduction, compared to what they began with. I contrast that with the announcement from Northumberland County Council that it is withdrawing free school transport for anybody over 16. That strikes me as a particular contrast between people who work in partnership and people who work against one another.
There is much to do and we on these Benches look forward to a busy and useful Session. I personally refute any suggestion that this is a stale Parliament.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate, with many very effective contributions. Of course, it was graced by the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester. We hope that his obligations to another assembly do not mean that he will not be able to attend ours with some degree of regularity and make contributions such as he did today.
These debates are extremely difficult to wind up, as the Minister will prove in a few moments, I trust. Partly of course it is because although a number of departments are down to be considered, noble Lords always make comments on departments that are not on the list. The list includes five major departments so the House will have to forgive me—and the Minister, I have no doubt—for prioritising my response to the issues.
We had a penetrating analysis of the economy in this debate. The Minister emphasised progress on infrastructure and plans for the future. I must say that most of the areas he was able to emphasise seemed to be infrastructure projects which went back in time. Crossrail and Thameslink were both started under the previous Government and HS2 was the initiative of my noble friend Lord Adonis, who opened for the Opposition in this debate. I am not surprised that the Government are eager to claim credit for the progress that has been made over the past few years, but on all sides of the House we recognise that major infrastructure projects are bound to proceed across several Governments. I hope the Minister will recognise that in a debate such as this, where he is meant to defend the Government’s policies and plans, reference to those originated in the past may not carry quite as much weight.
The noble Lord, Lord Birt, raised an issue to which the Minister made no reference and I am not sure whether the Minister replying to the debate will make much reference to it either. As the noble Lord asked, how on earth can it make sense that one of the most successful airports in the world, which is operating constantly at peak capacity and serves the nation in such a significant way, has five years of delay because the Government decide that it is too tricky an issue to address until after another general election? That, I should have thought, counterbalanced some of the praiseworthy attempts to show that our infrastructure programmes were on target.
My noble friend Lord Adonis referred to another area about which we have considerable concern. Everyone knows that the A14 road is of great significance to the country. After all, it links the Midlands to the docks at Felixstowe. It is a road that has been under incredible pressure for a considerable period. It also links with the A1, and therefore goods from the north. Where is the A14 at the moment? It is constantly subject to delay about whether its position should be enhanced. The Minister indicated that at last there is a desire to make progress on the A14. Yet again, we have seen several years of delay on a crucial transport infrastructure project.
As for the legislation, that concerned with transport scarcely measures up to the significance of transport as a crucial element in the economy. In the Queen’s Speech, we have a proposal, to which we are not in outright opposition, to change the nature of the Highways Agency. We agree that it is advantageous to try to ensure that the agency has some long-term perspective on its work. We also agree that it is entitled to some degree of operational independence. Not just we in this House but the Select Committee on Transport in the other place have great difficulty understanding the reasons behind the change to lock in the roads budget and incentivising staff by getting rid of the restrictions of Civil Service pay. I wonder whether those two objectives merit legislation related to transport in this debate, because they do not answer the questions that we have. Is the Highways Agency to be a strategic body? If so, where is the place for the Minister in the Department of Transport if a body is responsible for planning the roads for the future? How do we make this body answerable to Parliament? What will be the basis of more day-to-day scrutiny of this body and how will it be held to account? Will we in fact see any relationship between this body and the local and regional government to which it obviously ought to relate? The answer is quite straightforward: there are no answers at this point. We will of course debate the issue but this scarcely looks like a measure which is adequate to the needs of transport at this time.
We have also seen others introduce important dimensions to this debate in terms of transport and the welfare of people that revolve around the issues of local government. We often feel that, with regard to a debate on the Queen’s Speech, local government should be significant enough to be a focal point of the debate with a Minister answering on it. However, we are not blessed with that decision today. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester first raised that issue of local government and the importance of communities, and my noble friend Lord McKenzie brought his formidable knowledge to the issue to emphasise how much pressure local authorities were under. While we might have thought that that viewpoint was bound to be expressed by the Opposition, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, having first regaled us with the multifarious successes of the Liberal Democrats in the local elections, went on to indicate that the worst is yet to come. He said that local authority budgets would in fact be under greater pressure in this coming year, during the run-up to the 2015 election, than they have been up to now. The House should quail at that prospect because it is of course accurate.
Several noble Lords went on to discuss the issue of housing. It was raised first by my noble friend Lady Andrews in her very thoughtful contribution but my noble friend Lord McKenzie referred to it and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also emphasised housing in his speech. It was also referred to in the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester. Of course we all welcome Ebbsfleet and the concept of a garden city but Ebbsfleet will produce 15,000 homes, when on all sides it is recognised that the scale of the housing crisis we face is measured in terms of hundreds of thousands of homes. That is why we would have expected something more significant from the Government on housing than we have in that Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, missed no opportunity to emphasise the energy aspects of the debate today. He was following the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, who had referred to the important report of the House of Lords committee. We agree that it is important that the issue of shale is discussed as fully and as early as possible. There cannot be gains in delay but there are gains in ensuring that we get it right and give reassurances in the legislation to local communities on the potential extraction of shale. However, it would be absurd not to recognise the importance of getting as much information before Parliament as quickly as we can. That is why I support those two noble Lords in their representations on the work of the committee and appreciated the emphasis which they both put on shale.
Much of the debate revolved around the issue of the Treasury and the economy. We all appreciate that the base on which the development of our society turns depends a great deal on our ability to increase the resources available to the nation and to secure the fair distribution of those resources. I thought that we might have a fairly predictable and pedestrian debate on the economy but we were electrified by the contribution of my noble friend Lord Giddens, who asked the Minister summing up the debate to consider the position of two philosophers, Karl Marx and the Governor of the Bank of England. The Minister knows that she can concentrate on the Governor of the Bank of England but my noble friend was concerned to put before this House, and demand that the Government consider, the fundamentals of the nature of our economy and our society. There is plenty of evidence now to identify that distinctly unequal societies perform less well, have lower rates of economic growth and have lower rates of satisfaction in their communities than more equal societies. There is evidence developing now, and of course the Governor of the Bank of England was referring to this, that societies that seek to create more equal and rational rewards are better.
We never hear from the other side of the House—or at least very rarely; certainly not in my presence—concern expressed about the absurd difference that has grown up between the pay of chief executives along with those who are highly paid in industry and commerce and the static position of wages over the past decade. If the Government think that they are sailing into sunny uplands with a gentle drift towards success in the next general election, I point out to them that there was one reference that said that real people are yet to see the benefits under the coalition’s economic priorities. The person who that quote is taken from is Kenneth Clarke, who happens to be a member of the Cabinet in the coalition Government.
There is a great deal to worry about in the extent to which our communities have suffered so grievously over the past four years. I know that the Government purport to say that all the sacrifices were worth while because at last we have growth. We were bound to get growth at some stage, but we have had wasted years in which our people have seen their living standards decline in significant ways. It is therefore important that the Government recognise that the challenge is laid down from this side of the House. The Queen’s Speech scarcely merits much in the way of challenge. Most of us have scarcely seen a Queen’s Speech so devoid of content. If it is not zombies who have produced this gracious Speech, it is certainly those who agree with their colleagues in the Commons that a year before the day when you know an election is going to be called, you are much better off being in your constituencies talking to your constituents than passing legislation that Ministers are trying to foist on you.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester and congratulate him on making a maiden speech; to do so on the Queen’s Speech takes exceptional courage. He said that he has hard work ahead of him to achieve the goal of women bishops, and asked if there was enthusiastic support in this House. I assure him that there are many who will provide him with such support; indeed, he may regret asking the question.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, was right to say that the better the debate, the worse the wind-up. I realise that I have an extraordinary challenge in the wind-up today; there were so many speeches today across such a wide range of issues that I realise that in the time available it is going to be absolutely impossible to respond to all the points that have been made. Where there are questions that I have been unable to answer by the end of the debate, and there will be many, we will try to follow them up.
I start by putting today’s discussion in some sort of context. Four years ago we gathered in this Chamber to debate the first Queen’s Speech since the formation of the new Government. It was also the first time that Britain had a full coalition for more than half a century. However, we were also in the middle of the biggest economic crisis for decades. It was crucial that in that first Queen’s Speech we sent out a strong message of intent to reassure the country. Indeed, Her Majesty’s opening words in that Queen’s Speech of May 2010 made absolutely clear our top priorities: to reduce the deficit, restore economic growth and govern with fairness and responsibility. We know that those are the yardsticks against which this coalition Government’s performance will be measured.
I do not intend to reiterate the speech made by my noble friend and colleague Lord Deighton at the beginning of this debate, which listed the successes and achievements on the economic front. They were echoed by my noble friend Lord Flight, who predicted 3% GDP this year—I hope he will give me some good horseracing predictions, because that requires true courage and acuity. My noble friend Lord Razzall talked of the animal spirits that are pushing forward the economy. My noble friends Lord Northbrook and Lady Noakes pointed out how manufacturing is on an upward trend. That was a real challenge for us to achieve, and we are achieving it. My noble friend Lord Wrigglesworth talked about the achievement of reducing the structural deficit and achieving confidence in the markets at the same time as real fairness in the ways in which we have had to make cuts in order to manage the deficit. My noble friend Lord Shipley talked about the robust contribution of small businesses, as did quite a number of other noble Lords. When you listen to that list, you recognise that this is very far from a zombie Government. This Government are alive and kicking. I take the point that zombies are immortal. Now there is a prospect.
In fact, if anyone is looking a little pale on this occasion, it has to be the Opposition and their speeches today. I am just astonished at the level of amnesia. When I listened to the speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Adonis, Lord Giddens, Lord Lea of Crondall and, to an extent, Lord Davies, they all seemed to have forgotten the state of the economy that they handed to us. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, and this is crucial, that, yes, there was a financial crisis, but the Government had run this economy in such a way with such overspending that there was no resilience to come back from it, and it is because of that that we faced the crisis that we did, which was so much worse than that in other developed countries. It is from that base that we have moved forward.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that many of the issues that he raised and criticised this Government for were actions that his own Government had not taken. Although this is slightly out of the range of the economy, one of the things that shocks me most is that as I go up and down the country and talk to young people who are now just getting into employment, they came through education during the Labour years when they did not get the skills they needed, when there were no apprenticeships, respect for vocational education or opportunity. It is those changes, including 2 million apprenticeships by the end of this Parliament, that are beginning to make a real change and eat into the figure for long-term youth unemployment. I agree that we must focus on that relentlessly, but that is just one of the many issues on which I wanted to challenge.
The noble Lords, Lord Giddens, Lord Lea of Crondall and Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, all raised the issue of inequality. We have been in a period of real austerity. We are beginning to recover. We are now seeing wages begin to recover, which is crucial, but we also made sure that people kept their jobs. To have been through the period of recession that we have been in and to have managed to keep down unemployment, which is now down to 6.8%—which is not where we want it, we want it much lower—has been a very significant achievement. What more could you do to tackle inequality than to start to take people at the bottom of the earnings scale out of income tax? That is something that Labour never conceived of doing. Labour may now be on board—everybody is on board—but my party led on this issue and has been crucial in making those kinds of changes, along with apprenticeships and the kinds of opportunity that are offered.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned women. Since the coalition Government came to power in May 2010, there are 446,000 more women in employment. Between 2011 and 2012 the gender pay gap reduced for all employees. Even if you look only at full-time employees, it also reduced. We are not where we need to be but, my goodness, we are on the path. There are not many who could have said that, certainly not coming through the kind of economic period through which we have been. We must not relent.
I will try quickly to cover some of the key issues. On the issue of women, the tax-free childcare that we are now putting into place, something that has never been done before, as well as the improvements that we are making in the support to parents on universal credit, are great breakthroughs. They will be very important in the lives of people, especially in the lives of many women.
Quite a number of noble Lords raised the issues of social housing; I am trying to watch the time as best as I can. Social housing was the focus of speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer; it was covered by the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Leicester and of Rochester; and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, talked extensively about it, as did the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, Lord Wrigglesworth and Lord Harrison. They fell into two groups. There was discussion of affordable housing and housebuilding. When we came into government in the financial crisis, obviously the consequence of that financial crisis was that housebuilding had largely collapsed. It is one of the first industries that gives way in that kind of financial crisis. We have been coming back from that, but the impact of the crash was huge. Housebuilding is now at its highest since 2007. Over 445,000 homes have been built since April 2010; 170,000 affordable homes will be built between 2011 and 2015—we have got to 99,000 so far; and £23 billion of public and private finance will help to ensure another 165,000 more affordable homes between 2015 and 2018, which will be the fastest annual rate for 20 years.
We need to keep absolutely focused, which is one of the reasons why the Bills that were announced in the Queen’s Speech were so important. The ability now to transfer unused land held by agencies from those agencies to the HCA to turn into housing projects much more quickly will be one of the many things that will help, along with the changes in planning law which, as many have said, is not a protection in many cases but an obstacle. We need to change that dynamic.
The other issue that was raised was concern about the house price bubble in London. Hopefully, that is now mitigated against as we look at the most recent figures. I want to be absolutely clear that, as some said on the Floor of the House, Help to Buy does not appear to have been a contributor to that: Help to Buy has been helping people outside the London area. Mark Carney’s name has been taken in vain on quite a number of occasions, but what is really important is that the Bank of England is now looking at macroprudential tools rather than interest rates only to try and manage the housing market. It is now becoming tougher, for example, to qualify for a loan in London for high-priced houses. Mechanisms like that can help us deal with those bubbles without the necessary resort, which will have to happen at some point, to interest rates.
Somebody raised the question of foreign buyers. Noble Lords will know that Boris Johnson now has an agreement with builders in London that they will market first in London rather than overseas. There are other measures like that which we can manage to achieve. Others mentioned some of the tax steps that have been taken to try and contain that.
I move on quickly from that issue to the issue of energy, which obviously plays a big part in the Queen’s Speech. Again, I am under tight time pressure, so I will focus fairly heavily on the issues of extraction of oil and gas from shale, and geothermal. I want to provide some reassurances—I am desperately looking to find out exactly what the question was—that the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, discussed by its chair, the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, my noble friend Lord Teverson and the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Jones, and others, will be responded to before the summer recess.
There is a consultation at present on the Government’s proposals for underground access. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that this concerns access below 300 metres. Many of the people who oppose the headline that they see on this measure have no idea that we are talking about levels below 300 metres. It does not apply to surface access. It is very much to the credit of this country that we have a very tough regime of approval for the kind of exploration that would be necessary for shale oil and gas extraction. They are internationally recognised and there is no attempt to break down those protections, which are essential for the confidence of the community. Others have talked about the importance of sharing the benefits with the community, and a number of programmes deal with that. I will gladly write to noble Lords with more detail because I can see that time is racing away from me.
There were a number of questions on devolution and local government from the right reverend Prelates the Bishops of Leicester and of St Albans, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Shipley. Devolution is absolutely critical and the Government have taken it forward in a way that no one has for a generation. I work with the Local Growth Fund. Local enterprise partnerships are obviously working closely and are deeply engaged with their local authorities and other stakeholders in the community and are coming forward with strategic plans for economic growth in their areas, bringing in new kinds of thinking and breaking down the old silos, which is critical. It means that the Government are handing over the motivation for and the design of those strategic economic plans to local areas, which is a crucial piece of devolution.
I look at simple things in the transport world where we transferred significant parts of the support that we give to buses, including the bus service operators grant, back to local authorities. There is very much a pattern. I recognise that these are hard times, but the good local authorities have looked at the harder financial profiles they face and have managed them very effectively. I take on board the warning of my noble friend Lord Tope; we have had that same concern virtually every year. Really good authorities have found ways to deliver for local people—and, ironically, the approval ratings for local authorities have gone up significantly: they are now at 77%. So there are ways, and we must demand that at a time when every penny is important.
Infrastructure forms a significant part of the nature of this Bill and a number of people raised it. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, said we did not have a plan; we certainly have a plan by any definition of a plan that I know in the national infrastructure plan. As the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, is sitting here, I asked him to confirm what I am saying. The plan sets out what the Government want to achieve, the approach in each sector, and the action they will take to ensure delivery, including identifying key priority investments.
That has been crucial, and sometimes the numbers used to describe investment in the UK and to compare it with other countries fail to recognise that essentially road and rail are public investments in this country, but nearly every other kind of investment in infrastructure comes from the private sector. I was recently in the United States, where they are now trying desperately to copy what we are doing because one’s ability to leverage in that kind of private money significantly increases the amount of investment in infrastructure and creates so many possibilities that could never come from just using the public purse. So we need to stop using distorted figures when we look at these numbers.
Noble Lords talked of their concern over the new status of the Highways Agency—the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, mentioned it.
Baroness Kramer
I will have to come to the noble Lord with that number, because I do not have it to hand. I would be quite interested in seeing it myself, as I have not seen it expressed in that way—but I would be delighted to.
Something that is very important about the Highways Agency, which encapsulates the real change that this Government are bringing to infrastructure, is that it will sit as the delivery implementing agency, in effect, for future roads investment. Sitting outside it is the roads investment strategy, which remains entirely the responsibility of the Secretary of State. I should say that the Highways Agency is also wholly owned by the Government—it is definitely an agency. For the first time, we will have long-term certainty of funding for roads and a programme over a Parliament in the same way that we have had for rail. Many in this House have pointed out that the problem in project after project has been that investment has been subject to a stop-start set of decisions, which have disrupted long-term investment. Now we can begin to have that kind of assurance. Bringing into the Highways Agency people with the skills to deliver that efficiency, just as we are doing in the rail sector, is absolutely crucial. With the scale of investment that we are undertaking, we have to make sure that every penny is well spent. That means that we need that specialised expertise and we will have it going forward—we hope, if this House and the other place agree to the kinds of proposals being put forward in the Queen’s Speech.
I have less than two minutes, so I close by reiterating my thanks to everybody who is here. I recognise that there are very significant areas that I have not covered, but I shall try to do so in writing in response to questions. Finally, it has been an absolute privilege to be in the Department for Transport at this time. I look back at previous Ministers, and many in this House who had to deal with cuts and decline. We are at a time when this Government are taking a completely different approach towards infrastructure. It is part of the growth, because it becomes the framework for important economic growth. We are building Crossrail, we are completing the Northern Hub, and there will be £70 billion of capital investment in transport over the next Parliament. We are trebling the budget for major road schemes. Network Rail will spend £38 billion over the next five years. We have doubled the investment in cycling and we are investing £500 million to position Britain at the forefront of ultra low-carbon motoring. As the demand for travel rises, we are meeting that challenge.
Busy arteries such as the west coast main line will be overwhelmed in the next decade if we do not build new capacity between our cities in the form of new rail, which is why we need the new north-south rail High Speed 2. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that it is of course our intention that eventually there will be an HS1-HS2 link. The scheme in the programme was simply inappropriate and unworkable. It is something we want but we recognise that it will need to be looked at in the future.
However, the most important thing about HS2—this goes back to the discussion on the economy and equality—is that it offers so much opportunity to the Midlands and the north, which they deserve. We must take connectivity along with it. That goes back to the devolution issue. The noble Lord, Lord Deighton, has led that work and worked closely with the communities in the Midlands and the north. They have told us what connectivity is needed to maximise the benefits of HS2. That line offers a future in which once again, as has always been the case traditionally, the Midlands and the north can balance out London and we achieve growth all across our nation so there are no areas to which we have to transfer payment, as it were. Rather, there will be great generation of wealth, income, jobs and new business all across the country.
I thank noble Lords for their contributions and wish there had been time to respond to more of the questions.